The Commonwealth of Oceana

by James Harrington

1656

JANOTTI, the most
excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice, divides the whole
series of government into two times or periods: the one ending with the
liberty of Rome, which was the course or empire, as I may call it, of
ancient prudence, first discovered to mankind by God himself in the fabric
of the commonwealth of Israel, and afterward picked out of his footsteps
in nature, and unanimously followed by the Greeks and Romans; the other
beginning with the arms of Caesar, which, extinguishing liberty, were the
transition of ancient into modern prudence, introduced by those
inundations of Huns, Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Saxons, which, breaking the
Roman Empire, deformed the whole face of the world with those ill-features
of government, which at this time are become far worse in these western
parts, except Venice, which, escaping the hands of the barbarians by
virtue of its impregnable situation, has had its eye fixed upon ancient
prudence, and is attained to a perfection even beyond the copy.

Relation being had to these two times, government (to define it de jure,
or according to ancient prudence) is an art whereby a civil society of men
is instituted and preserved upon the foundation of common right or
interest; or, to follow Aristotle and Livy, it is the empire of laws, and
not of men.

And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern prudence)
is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation,
and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the
laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some
few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.

The former kind is that which Machiavel (whose books are neglected) is
the only politician that has gone about to retrieve; and that Leviathan
(who would have his book imposed upon the universities) goes about to
destroy. For "it is," says he, "another error of
Aristotle's politics that in a well-ordered commonwealth, not men should
govern, but the laws. What man that has his natural senses, though he can
neither write nor read, does not find himself governed by them he fears,
and believes can kill or hurt him when he obeys not? or, who believes that
the law can hurt him, which is but words and paper, without the hands and
swords of men?" I confess that the magistrate upon his bench is that
to the law which a gunner upon his platform is to his cannon.
Nevertheless, I should not dare to argue with a man of any ingenuity after
this manner. A whole army, though they can neither write nor read, are not
afraid of a platform, which they know is but earth or stone; nor of a
cannon, which, without a hand to give fire to it, is but cold iron;
therefore a whole army is afraid of one man. But of this kind is the
ratiocination of Leviathan, as I shall show in divers places that come in
my way, throughout his whole politics, or worse; as where he says, "of
Aristotle and of Cicero, of the Greeks, and of the Romans, who lived under
popular States, that they derived those rights, not from the principles of
nature, but transcribed them into their books out of the practice of their
own commonwealths, as grammarians describe the rules of language out of
poets." Which is as if a man should tell famous Harvey that he
transcribed his circulation of the blood, not out of the principles of
nature, but out of the anatomy of this or that body.

To go on therefore with his preliminary discourse, I shall divide it,
according to the two definitions of government relating to Janotti's two
times, in two parts: the first, treating of the principles of government
in general, and according to the ancients; the second, treating of the
late governments of Oceana in particular, and in that of modern prudence.

Government, according to the ancients, and their learned disciple
Machiavel, the only politician of later ages, is of three kinds: the
government of one man, or of the better sort, or of the whole people;
which, by their more learned names, are called monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy. These they hold, through their proneness to degenerate, to be
all evil. For whereas they that govern should govern according to reason,
if they govern according to passion they do that which they should not do.
Wherefore, as reason and passion are two things, so government by reason
is one thing, and the corruption of government by passion is another
thing, but not always another government: as a body that is alive is one
thing, and a body that is dead is another thing, but not always another
creature, though the corruption of one comes at length to be the
generation of another. The corruption then of monarchy is called tyranny;
that of aristocracy, oligarchy and that of democracy, anarchy. But
legislators, having found these three governments at the best to be
naught, have invented another, consisting of a mixture of them all, which
only is good. This is the doctrine of the ancients.

But Leviathan is positive that they are all deceived, and that there is
no other government in nature than one of the three; as also that the
flesh of them cannot stink, the names of their corruptions being but the
names of men's fancies, which will be understood when we are shown which
of them was Senatus Populusque Romanus.

To go my own way, and yet to follow the ancients, the principles of
government are twofold: internal, or the goods of the mind; and external,
or the goods of fortune. The goods of the mind are natural or acquired
virtues, as wisdom, prudence, and courage, etc. The goods of fortune are
riches. There be goods also of the body, as health, beauty, strength; but
these are not to be brought into account upon this score, because if a man
or an army acquires victory or empire, it is more from their discipline,
arms, and courage than from their natural health, beauty, or strength, in
regard that a people conquered may have more of natural strength, beauty,
and health, and yet find little remedy. The principles of government then
are in the goods of the mind, or in the goods of fortune. To the goods of
the mind answers authority; to the goods of fortune, power or empire.
Wherefore Leviathan, though he be right where he says that "riches
are power," is mistaken where he says that "prudence, or the
reputation of prudence, is power;" for the learning or prudence of a
man is no more power than the learning or prudence of a book or author,
which is properly authority. A learned writer may have authority though he
has no power; and a foolish magistrate may have power, though he has
otherwise no esteem or authority. The difference of these two is observed
by Livy in Evander, of whom he says that he governed rather by the
authority of others than by his own power.

To begin with riches, in regard that men are hung upon these, not of
choice as upon the other, but of necessity and by the teeth; forasmuch as
he who wants bread is his servant that will feed him, if a man thus feeds
a whole people, they are under his empire.

Empire is of two kinds, domestic and national, or foreign and
provincial.

Domestic empire is founded upon dominion. Dominion is property, real or
personal; that is to say, in lands, or in money and goods.

Lands, or the parts and parcels of a territory, are held by the
proprietor or proprietors, lord or lords of it, in some proportion; and
such (except it be in a city that has little or no land, and whose revenue
is in trade) as is the proportion or balance of dominion or property in
land, such is the nature of the empire.

If one man be sole landlord of a territory, or overbalance the people,
for example, three parts in four, he is grand seignior; for so the Turk is
called from his property, and his empire is absolute monarchy.

If the few or a nobility, or a nobility with the clergy, be landlords,
or overbalance the people to the like proportion, it makes the Gothic
balance (to be shown at large in the second part of this discourse), and
the empire is mixed monarchy, as that of Spain, Poland, and late of
Oceana.

And if the whole people be landlords, or hold the lands so divided among
them that no one man, or number of men, within the compass of the few or
aristocracy, overbalance them, the empire (without the interposition of
force) is a commonwealth.

If force be interposed in any of these three cases, it must either frame
the government to the foundation, or the foundation to the government; or
holding the government not according to the balance, it is not natural,
but violent; and therefore if it be at the devotion of a prince, it is
tyranny; if at the devotion of the few, oligarchy; or if in the power of
the people, anarchy: Each of which confusions, the balance standing
otherwise, is but of short continuance, because against the nature of the
balance, which, not destroyed, destroys that which opposes it.

But there be certain other confusions, which, being rooted in the
balance, are of longer continuance, and of worse consequence; as, first,
where a nobility holds half the property, or about that proportion, and
the people the other half; in which case, without altering the balance
there is no remedy but the one must eat out the other, as the people did
the nobility in Athens, and the nobility the people in Rome. Secondly,
when a prince holds about half the dominion, and the people the other half
(which was the case of the Roman emperors, planted partly upon their
military colonies and partly upon the Senate and the people), the
government becomes a very shambles, both of the princes and the people.
Somewhat of this nature are certain governments at this day, which are
said to subsist by confusion. In this case, to fix the balance is to
entail misery; but in the three former, not to fix it is to lose the
government. Wherefore it being unlawful in Turkey that any should possess
land but the Grand Seignior, the balance is fixed by the law, and that
empire firm. Nor, though the kings often sell was the throne of Oceana
known to shake, until the statute of alienations broke the pillars, by
giving way to the nobility to sell their estates. While Lacedaemon held to
the division of land made by Lycurgus, it was immovable; but, breaking
that, could stand no longer. This kind of law fixing the balance in lands
is called agrarian, and was first introduced by God himself, who divided
the land of Canaan to his people by lots, and is of such virtue that
wherever it has held, that government has not altered, except by consent;
as in that unparalleled example of the people of Israel, when being in
liberty they would needs choose a king. But without an agrarian law,
government, whether monarchical, aristocratical, or popular, has no long
lease.

As for dominion, personal or in money, it may now and then stir up a
Melius or a Manlius, which, if the Commonwealth be not provided with some
kind of dictatorian power, may be dangerous, though it has been seldom or
never successful; because to property producing empire, it is required
that it should have some certain root or foothold, which, except in land,
it cannot have, being otherwise as it were upon the wing.

Nevertheless, in such cities as subsist mostly by trade, and have little
or no land, as Holland and Genoa, the balance of treasure may be equal to
that of land in the cases mentioned.

But Leviathan, though he seems to skew at antiquity, following his
furious master Carneades, has caught hold of the public sword, to which he
reduces all manner and matter of government; as, where he affirms this
opinion (that any monarch receives his power by covenant; that is to say,
upon conditions)" to proceed from the not understanding this easy
truth, that covenants being but words and breath, have no power to oblige,
contain, constrain, or protect any man, but what they have from the public
sword." But as he said of the law, that without this sword it is but
paper, so he might have thought of this sword, that without a hand it is
but cold iron. The hand which holds this sword is the militia of a nation;
and the militia of a nation is either an army in the field, or ready for
the field upon occasion. But an army is a beast that has a great belly,
and must be fed: wherefore this will come to what pastures you have, and
what pastures you have will come to the balance of property, without which
the public sword is but a name or mere spitfrog. Wherefore, to set that
which Leviathan says of arms and of contracts a little straighter, he that
can graze this beast with the great belly, as the Turk does his Timariots,
may well deride him that imagines he received his power by covenant, or is
obliged to any such toy. It being in this case only that covenants are but
words and breath. But if the property of the nobility, stocked with their
tenants and retainers, be the pasture of that beast, the ox knows his
master's crib; and it is impossible for a king in such a constitution to
reign otherwise than by covenant; or if he break it, it is words that come
to blows.

"But," says he, "when an assembly of men is made
sovereign, then no man imagines any such covenant to have part in the
institution." But what was that by Publicola of appeal to the people,
or that whereby the people had their tribunes? "Fie," says he, "nobody
is so dull as to say that the people of Rome made a covenant with the
Romans, to hold the sovereignty on such or such conditions, which, not
performed, the Romans might depose the Roman people." In which there
be several remarkable things; for he holds the Commonwealth of Rome to
have consisted of one assembly, whereas it consisted of the Senate and the
people; that they were not upon covenant, whereas every law enacted by
them was a covenant between them; that the one assembly was made
sovereign, whereas the people, who only were sovereign, were such from the
beginning, as appears by the ancient style of their covenants or laws -- "The
Senate has resolved, the people have decreed," that a council being
made sovereign, cannot be made such upon conditions, whereas the Decemvirs
being a council that was made sovereign, was made such upon conditions;
that all conditions or covenants making a sovereign being made, are void;
whence it must follow that, the Decemviri being made, were ever after the
lawful government of Rome, and that it was unlawful for the Commonwealth
of Rome to depose the Decemvirs; as also that Cicero, if he wrote
otherwise out of his commonwealth, did not write out of nature. But to
come to others that see more of this balance.

You have Aristotle full of it in divers places, especially where he
says, that "immoderate wealth, as where one man or the few have
greater possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth
will bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends for the greater part in
monarchy and that for this cause the ostracism has been received in divers
places, as in Argos and Athens. But that it were better to prevent the
growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek the remedy of
such an evil."

Machiavel has missed it very narrowly and more dangerously for not fully
perceiving that if a commonwealth be galled by the gentry it is by their
overbalance, he speaks of the gentry as hostile to popular governments,
and of popular governments as hostile to the gentry; and makes us believe
that the people in such are so enraged against them, that where they meet
a gentleman they kill him: which can never be proved by any one example,
unless in civil war, seeing that even in Switzerland the gentry are not
only safe, but in honor. But the balance, as I have laid it down, though
unseen by Machiavel, is that which interprets him, and that which he
confirms by his judgment in many others as well as in this place, where he
concludes, "That he who will go about to make a commonwealth where
there be many gentlemen, unless he first destroys them, undertakes an
impossibility. And that he who goes about to introduce monarchy where the
condition of the people is equal, shall never bring it to pass, unless he
cull out such of them as are the most turbulent and ambitious, and make
them gentlemen or noblemen, not in name but in effect; that is, by
enriching them with lands, castles, and treasures, that may gain them
power among the rest, and bring in the rest to dependence upon themselves,
to the end that, they maintaining their ambition by the prince, the prince
may maintain his power by them."

Wherefore, as in this place I agree with Machiavel, that a nobility or
gentry, overbalancing a popular government, is the utter bane and
destruction of it; so I shall show in another, that a nobility or gentry,
in a popular government, not overbalancing it, is the very life and soul
of it.

By what has been said, it should seem that we may lay aside further
disputes of the public sword, or of the right of the militia; which, be
the government what it will, or let it change how it can, is inseparable
from the overbalance in dominion: nor, if otherwise stated by the law or
custom (as in the Commonwealth of Rome, where the people having the sword,
the nobility came to have the overbalance), avails it to any other end
than destruction. For as a building swaying from the foundation must fall,
so it fares with the law swaying from reason, and the militia from the
balance of dominion. And thus much for the balance of national or domestic
empire, which is in dominion.

The balance of foreign or provincial empire is of a contrary nature. A
man may as well say that it is unlawful for him who has made a fair and
honest purchase to have tenants, as for a government that has made a just
progress and enlargement of itself to have provinces. But how a province
may be justly acquired appertains to another place. In this I am to show
no more than how or upon what kind of balance it is to be held; in order
whereto I shall first show upon what kind of balance it is not to be held.
It has been said, that national or independent empire, of what kind
soever, is to be exercised by them that have the proper balance of
dominion in the nation; wherefore provincial or dependent empire is not to
be exercised by them that have the balance of dominion in the province,
because that would bring the government from provincial and dependent, to
national and independent. Absolute monarchy, as that of the Turks, neither
plants its people at home nor abroad, otherwise than as tenants for life
or at will; wherefore its national and provincial government is all one.
But in governments that admit the citizen or subject to dominion in lands,
the richest are they that share most of the power at home; whereas the
richest among the provincials, though native subjects, or citizens that
have been transplanted, are least admitted to the government abroad; for
men, like flowers or roots being transplanted, take after the soil wherein
they grow. Wherefore the Commonwealth of Rome, by planting colonies of its
citizens within the bounds of Italy, took the best way of propagating
itself, and naturalizing the country; whereas if it had planted such
colonies without the bounds of Italy it would have alienated the citizens,
and given a root to liberty abroad, that might have sprung up foreign or
savage, and hostile to her: wherefore it never made any such dispersion of
itself and its strength, till it was under the yoke of the Emperors, who,
disburdening themselves of the people, as having less apprehension of what
they could do abroad than at home, took a contrary course.

The Mamelukes (which, till any man show me the contrary, I shall presume
to have been a commonwealth consisting of an army, whereof the common
soldier was the people, the commissioned officer the Senate, and the
general the prince) were foreigners, and by nation Circassians, that
governed Egypt; wherefore these never durst plant themselves upon
dominion, which growing naturally up into the national interest, must have
dissolved the foreign yoke in that province.

The like in some sort may be said of Venice, the government whereof is
usually mistaken; for Venice, though it does not take in the people, never
excluded them. This commonwealth, the orders whereof are the most
democratical or popular of all others, in regard of the exquisite rotation
of the Senate, at the first institution took in the whole people; they
that now live under the government without participation of it, are such
as have since either voluntarily chosen so to do, or were subdued by arms.
Wherefore the subject of Venice is governed by provinces, and the balance
of dominion not standing, as has been said, with provincial government; as
the Mamelukes durst not cast their government upon this balance in their
provinces, lest the national interest should have rooted out the foreign,
so neither dare the Venetians take in their subjects upon this balance,
lest the foreign interest should root out the national (which is that of
the 3,000 now governing), and by diffusing the commonwealth throughout her
territories, lose the advantage of her situation, by which in great part
it subsists. And such also is the government of the Spaniard in the
Indies, to which he deputes natives of his own country, not admitting the
creoles to the government of those provinces, though descended from
Spaniards.

But if a prince or a commonwealth may hold a territory that is foreign
in this, it may be asked why he may not hold one that is native in the
like manner? To which I answer, because he can hold a foreign by a native
territory, but not a native by a foreign; and as hitherto I have shown
what is not the provincial balance, so by this answer it may appear what
it is, namely, the overbalance of a native territory to a foreign; for as
one country balances itself by the distribution of property according to
the proportion of the same, so one country overbalances another by
advantage of divers kinds. For example, the Commonwealth of Rome
overbalanced her provinces by the vigor of a more excellent government
opposed to a crazier. Or by a more exquisite militia opposed to one
inferior in courage or discipline. The like was that of the Mamelukes,
being a hardy people, to the Egyptians, that were a soft one. And the
balance of situation is in this kind of wonderful effect; seeing the King
of Denmark, being none of the most potent princes, is able at the Sound to
take toll of the greatest; and as this King, by the advantage of the land,
can make the sea tributary, so Venice, by the advantage of the sea, in
whose arms she is impregnable, can make the land to feed her gulf. For the
colonies in the Indies, they are yet babes that cannot live without
sucking the breasts of their mother cities, but such as I mistake if when
they come of age they do not wean themselves; which causes me to wonder at
princes that delight to be exhausted in that way. And so much for the
principles of power, whether national or provincial, domestic or foreign;
being such as are external, and founded in the goods of fortune.

I come to the principles of authority, which are internal, and founded
upon the goods of the mind. These the legislator that can unite in his
government with those of fortune, comes nearest to the work of God, whose
government consists of heaven and earth; which was said by Plato, though
in different words, as, when princes should be philosophers, or
philosophers princes, the world would be happy. And says Solomon: "There
is an evil which I have seen under the sun, which proceeds from the ruler
(enimvero neque nobilem, neque ingenuum, nec libertinum quidem armis
praeponere, regia utilitas est). Folly is set in great dignity, and the
rich (either in virtue and wisdom, in the goods of the mind, or those of
fortune upon that balance which gives them a sense of the national
interest) sit in low places. I have seen servants upon horses, and princes
walking as servants upon the earth." Sad complaints, that the
principles of power and of authority, the goods of the mind and of
fortune, do not meet and twine in the wreath or crown of empire!
Wherefore, if we have anything of piety or of prudence, let us raise
ourselves out of the mire of private interest to the contemplation of
virtue, and put a hand to the removal of "this evil from under the
sun;" this evil against which no government that is not secured can
be good; this evil from which the government that is secure must be
perfect. Solomon tells us that the cause of it is from the ruler, from
those principles of power, which, balanced upon earthly trash, exclude the
heavenly treasures of virtue, and that influence of it upon government
which is authority. We have wandered the earth to find out the balance of
power; but to find out that of authority we must ascend, as I said, nearer
heaven, or to the image of God, which is the soul of man.

The soul of man (whose life or motion is perpetual contemplation or
thought) is the mistress of two potent rivals, the one reason, the other
passion, that are in continual suit; and, according as she gives up her
will to these or either of them, is the felicity or misery which man
partakes in this mortal life.

For, as whatever was passion in the contemplation of a man, being
brought forth by his will into action, is vice and the bondage of sin; so
whatever was reason in the contemplation of a man, being brought forth by
his will into action, is virtue and the freedom of soul.

Again, as those actions of a man that were sin acquire to himself
repentance or shame, and affect others with scorn or pity, so those
actions of a man that are virtue acquire to himself honor, and upon others
authority.

Now government is no other than the soul of a nation or city: wherefore
that which was reason in the debate of a commonwealth being brought forth
by the result, must be virtue; and forasmuch as the soul of a city or
nation is the sovereign power, her virtue must be law. But the government
whose law is virtue, and whose virtue is law, is the same whose empire is
authority, and whose authority is empire.

Again, if the liberty of a man consists in the empire of his reason, the
absence whereof would betray him to the bondage of his passions, then the
liberty of a commonwealth consists in the empire of her laws, the absence
whereof would betray her to the lust of tyrants. And these I conceive to
be the principles upon which Aristotle and Livy (injuriously accused by
Leviathan for not writing out of nature) have grounded their assertion, "that
a commonwealth is an empire of laws and not of men." But they must
not carry it so. "For," says he, "the liberty whereof there
is so frequent and honorable mention in the histories and philosophy of
the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the writings and discourses of those
that from them have received all their learning in the politics, is not
the liberty of particular men, but the liberty of the commonwealth."
He might as well have said that the estates of particular men in a
commonwealth are not the riches of particular men, but the riches of the
commonwealth; for equality of estates causes equality of power, and
equality of power is the liberty, not only of the commonwealth, but of
every man.

But sure a man would never be thus irreverent with the greatest authors,
and positive against all antiquity without some certain demonstration of
truth -- and what is it? Why, "there is written on the turrets of the
city of Lucca in great characters at this day the word LIBERTAS; yet no
man can thence infer that a particular man has more liberty or immunity
from the service of the commonwealth there than in Constantinople. Whether
a commonwealth be monarchical or popular the freedom is the same."
The mountain has brought forth, and we have a little equivocation! For to
say that a Lucchese has no more liberty or immunIty from the laws of Lucca
than a Turk has from those of Constantinople; and to say that a Lucchese
has no more liberty or immunity by the laws of Lucca, than a Turk has by
those of Constantinople, are pretty different speeches. The first may be
said of all governments alike; the second scarce of any two; much less of
these, seeing it is known that, whereas the greatest Bashaw is a tenant,
as well of his head as of his estate, at the will of his lord, the meanest
Lucchese that has land is a freeholder of both, and not to be controlled
but by the law, and that framed by every private man to no other end (or
they may thank themselves) than to protect the liberty of every private
man, which by that means comes to be the liberty of the commonwealth.

But seeing they that make the laws in commonwealths are but men, the
main question seems to be, how a commonwealth comes to be an empire of
laws, and not of men? or how the debate or result of a commonwealth is so
sure to be according to reason; seeing they who debate, and they who
resolve, be but men? "And as often as reason is against a man, so
often will a man be against reason."

This is thought to be a shrewd saying, but will do no harm; for be it so
that reason is nothing but interest, there be divers interests, and so
divers reasons.

As first, there is private reason, which is the interest of a private
man.

Secondly, there is reason of state, which is the interest (or error, as
was said by Solomon) of the ruler or rulers, that is to say, of the
prince, of the nobility, or of the people.

Thirdly there is that reason, which is the interest of mankind, or of
the whole. "Now if we see even in those natural agents that want
sense, that as in themselves they have a law which directs them in the
means whereby they tend to their own perfection, so likewise that another
law there is, which touches them as they are sociable parts united into
one body, a law which binds them each to serve to others' good, and all to
prefer the good of the whole, before whatsoever their own particular; as
when stones, or heavy things, forsake their ordinary wont or centre, and
fly upward, as if they heard themselves commanded to let go the good they
privately wish, and to relieve the present distress of nature in common."
There is a common right, law of nature, or interest of the whole, which is
more excellent, and so acknowledged to be by the agents themselves, than
the right or interest of the parts only. "Wherefore, though it may be
truly said that the creatures are naturally carried forth to their proper
utility or profit, that ought not to be taken in too general a sense;
seeing divers of them abstain from their own profit, either in regard of
those of the same kind, or at least of their young."

Mankind then must either be less just than the creature, or acknowledge
also his common interest to be common right. And if reason be nothing else
but interest, and the interest of mankind be the right interest, then the
reason of mankind must be right reason. Now compute well; for if the
interest of popular government come the nearest to the interest of
mankind, then the reason of popular government must come the nearest to
right reason.

But it may be said that the difficulty remains yet; for be the interest
of popular government right reason, a man does not look upon reason as it
is right or wrong in itself, but as it makes for him or against him.
Wherefore, unless you can show such orders of a government as, like those
of God in nature, shall be able to constrain this or that creature to
shake off that inclination which is more peculiar to it, and take up that
which regards the common good or interest, all this is to no more end than
to persuade every man in a popular government not to carve himself of that
which he desires most, but to be mannerly at the public table, and give
the best from himself to decency and the common interest. But that such
orders may be established as may, nay must, give the upper hand in all
cases to common right or interest, notwithstanding the nearness of that
which sticks to every man in private, and this in a way of equal certainty
and facility, is known even to girls, being no other than those that are
of common practice with them in divers cases. For example, two of them
have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them: that each of them
therefore might have that which is due, "Divide," says one to
the other, "and I will choose; or let me divide, and you shall
choose." If this be but once agreed upon, it is enough; for the
divident, dividing unequally, loses, in regard that the other takes the
better half. Wherefore she divides equally, and so both have right. "Oh,
the depth of the wisdom of God." And yet "by the mouths of babes
and sucklings has He set forth His strength;" that which great
philosophers are disputing upon in vain is brought to light by two
harmless girls, even the whole mystery of a commonwealth, which lies only
in dividing and choosing. Nor has God (if his works in nature be
understood) left so much to mankind to dispute upon as who shall divide
and who choose, but distributed them forever into two orders, whereof the
one has the natural right of dividing, and the other of choosing.

For example: A commonwealth is but a civil society of men: let us take
any number of men (as twenty) and immediately make a commonwealth. Twenty
men (if they be not all idiots, perhaps if they be) can never come so
together but there will be such a difference in them that about a third
will be wiser, or at least less foolish than all the rest; these upon
acquaintance, though it be but small, will be discovered, and, as stags
that have the largest heads, lead the herd; for while the six, discoursing
and arguing one with another, show the eminence of their parts, the
fourteen discover things that they never thought on; or are cleared in
divers truths which had formerly perplexed them. Wherefore, in matter of
common concernment, difficulty, or danger, they hang upon their lips, as
children upon their fathers; and the influence thus acquired by the six,
the eminence of whose parts are found to be a stay and comfort to the
fourteen, is the authority of the fathers. Wherefore this can be no other
than a natural aristocracy diffused by God throughout the whole body of
mankind to this end and purpose; and therefore such as the people have not
only a natural but a positive obligation to make use of as their guides;
as where the people of Israel are commanded to "take wise men, and
understanding, and known among their tribes, to be made rulers over them."
The six then approved of, as in the present case, are the senate, not by
hereditary right, or in regard of the greatness of their estates only,
which would tend to such power as might force or draw the people, but by
election for their excellent parts, which tends to the advancement of the
influence of their virtue or authority that leads the people. Wherefore
the office of the senate is not to be commanders, but counsellors, of the
people; and that which is proper to counsellors is first to debate, and
afterward to give advice in the business whereupon they have debated,
whence the decrees of the senate are never laws, nor so called; and these
being maturely framed, it is their duty to propose in the case to the
people. Wherefore the senate is no more than the debate of the
commonwealth. But to debate is to discern or put a difference between
things that, being alike, are not the same; or it is separating and
weighing this reason against that, and that reason against this, which is
dividing.

The senate then having divided, who shall choose? Ask the girls: for if
she that divided must have chosen also, it had been little worse for the
other in case she had not divided at all, but kept the whole cake to
herself, in regard that being to choose, too, she divided accordingly.
Wherefore if the senate have any further power than to divide, the
commonwealth can never be equal. But in a commonwealth consisting of a
single council, there is no other to choose than that which divided;
whence it is, that such a council fails not to scramble -- that is, to be
factious, there being no other dividing of the cake in that case but among
themselves.

Nor is there any remedy but to have another council to choose. The
wisdom of the few may be the light of mankind; but the interest of the few
is not the profit of mankind nor of a commonwealth. Wherefore, seeing we
have granted interest to be reason, they must not choose lest it put out
their light. But as the council dividing consists of the wisdom of the
commonwealth, so the assembly or council choosing should consist of the
interest of the commonwealth: as the wisdom of the commonwealth is in the
aristocracy, so the interest of the commonwealth is in the whole body of
the people. And whereas this, in case the commonwealth consist of a whole
nation, is too unwieldy a body to be assembled, this council is to consist
of such a representative as may be equal, and so constituted, as can never
contract any other interest than that of the whole people; the manner
whereof, being such as is best shown by exemplification, I remit to the
model. But in the present case, the six dividing, and the fourteen
choosing, must of necessity take in the whole interest of the twenty.

Dividing and choosing, in the language of a commonwealth, is debating
and resolving; and whatsoever, upon debate of the senate, is proposed to
the people, and resolved by them, is enacted by the authority of the
fathers, and by the power of the people, which concurring, make a law.

But the law being made, says Leviathan, "is but words and paper
without the hands and swords of men;" wherefore as these two orders
of a commonwealth, namely, the senate and the people, are legislative, so
of necessity there must be a third to be executive of the laws made, and
this is the magistracy. In which order, with the rest being wrought up by
art, the commonwealth consists of "the senate proposing, the people
resolving, and the magistracy executing," whereby partaking of the
aristocracy as in the senate, of the democracy as in the people, and of
monarchy as in the magistracy, it is complete. Now there being no other
commonwealth but this in art or nature, it is no wonder if Machiavel has
shown us that the ancients held this only to be good; but it seems strange
to me that they should hold that there could be any other, for if there be
such a thing as pure monarchy, yet that there should be such a one as pure
aristocracy or pure democracy is not in my understanding. But the
magistracy, both in number and function, is different in different
commonwealths. Nevertheless there is one condition of it that must be the
same in every one, or it dissolves the commonwealth where it is wanting.
And this is no less than that, as the hand of the magistrate is the
executive power of the law, so the head of the magistrate is answerable to
the people, that his execution be according to the law; by which Leviathan
may see that the hand or sword that executes the law is in it and not
above it.

Now whether I have rightly transcribed these principles of a
commonwealth out of nature, I shall appeal to God and to the world -- to
God in the fabric of the Commonwealth of Israel, and to the world in the
universal series of ancient prudence. But in regard the same commonwealths
will be opened at large in the Council of legislators, I shall touch them
for the present but slightly, beginning with that of Israel.

The Commonwealth of Israel consisted of the Senate, the people, and the
magistracy.

The people by their first division, which was genealogical, were
contained under their thirteen tribes, houses, or families; whereof the
first-born in each was prince of his tribe, and had the leading of it: the
tribe of Levi only, being set apart to serve at the altar, had no other
prince but the high-priest. In their second division they were divided
locally by their agrarian, or the distribution of the land of Canaan to
them by lot, the tithe of all remaining to Levi; whence, according to
their local division, the tribes are reckoned but twelve.

The assemblies of the people thus divided were methodically gathered by
trumpets to the congregation: which was, it should seem, of two sorts. For
if it were called with one trumpet only, the princes of the tribes and the
elders only assembled; but if it were called with two, the whole people
gathered themselves to the congregation, for so it is rendered by the
English; but in the Greek it is called Ecclesia, or the Church of God, and
by the Talmudist the great "Synagogue." The word Ecclesia was
also anciently and properly used for the civil congregations, or
assemblies of the people in Athens, Lacedaemon, and Ephesus, where it is
so called in Scripture, though it be otherwise rendered by the
translators, not much as I conceive to their commendation, seeing by that
means they have lost us a good lesson, the apostles borrowing that name
for their spiritual congregations, to the end that we might see they
intended the government of the church to be democratical or popular, as is
also plain in the rest of their constitutions.

The church or congregation of the people of Israel assembled in a
military manner, and had the result of the commonwealth, or the power of
confirming all their laws, though proposed even by God himself; as where
they make him king, and where they reject or depose him as civil
magistrate, and elect Saul. It is manifest that he gives no such example
to a legislator in a popular government as to deny or evade the power of
the people, which were a contradiction; but though he deservedly blames
the ingratitude of the people in that action, he commands Samuel, being
next under himself supreme magistrate, "to hearken to their voice"
(for where the suffrage of the people goes for nothing, it is no
commonwealth), and comforts him, saying, "They have not rejected
thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them."
But to reject him that he should not reign over them, was as civil
magistrate to depose him. The power therefore which the people had to
depose even God himself as he was civil magistrate, leaves little doubt
but that they had power to have rejected any of those laws confirmed by
them throughout the Scripture, which, to omit the several parcels, are
generally contained under two heads: those that were made by covenant with
the people in the land of Moab, and those which were made by covenant with
the people in Horeb; which two, I think, amount to the whole body of the
Israelitish laws.

But if all and every one of the laws of Israel being proposed by God,
were no otherwise enacted than by covenant with the people, then that only
which was resolved by the people of Israel was their law; and so the
result of that commonwealth was in the people. Nor had the people the
result only in matter of law, but the power in some cases of judicature;
as also the right of levying war, cognizance in matter of religion, and
the election of their magistrates, as the judge or dictator, the king, the
prince: which functions were exercised by the Synagoga magna, or
Congregation of Israel, not always in one manner, for sometimes they were
performed by the suffrage of the people, viva voce, sometimes by the lot
only, and at others by the ballot, or by a mixture of the lot with the
suffrage, as in the case of Eldad and Medad, which I shall open with the
Senate.

The Senate of Israel, called in the old Testament the Seventy Elders,
and in the New the Sanhedrim (which word is usually translated "the
Council"), was appointed by God, and consisted of seventy elders
besides Moses, which were at first elected by the people, but in what
manner is rather intimated than shown. Nevertheless, because I cannot
otherwise understand the passage concerning Eldad and Medad, of whom it is
said "that they were of them that were written, but went not up to
the tabernacle," then with the Talmudists I conceive that Eldad and
Medad had the suffrage of the tribes, and so were written as competitors
for magistracy; but coming afterward to the lot, failed of it, and
therefore went not up to the tabernacle, or place of confirmation by God,
or to the session-house of the Senate, with the Seventy upon whom the lot
fell to be senators; for the session-house of the Sanhedrim was first in
the court of the tabernacle, and afterward in that of the Temple, where it
came to be called the stone chamber or pavement. If this were the ballot
of Israel, that of Venice is the same transposed; for in Venice the
competitor is chosen as it were by the lot, in regard that the electors
are so made, and the magistrate is chosen by the "suffrage of the
great Council or assembly of the people." But the Sanhedrim of Israel
being thus constituted, Moses, for his time, and after him his successor
sat in the midst of it as prince or archon, and at his left hand the
orator or father of the Senate; the rest, or the bench, coming round with
either horn like a crescent, had a scribe attending upon the tip of it.

This Senate, in regard the legislator of Israel was infallible, and the
laws given by God such as were not fit to be altered by men, is much
different in the exercise of their power from all other senates, except
that of the Areopagus in Athens, which also was little more than a supreme
judicatory, for it will hardly, as I conceive, be found that the Sanhedrim
proposed to the people till the return of the children of Israel out of
captivity under Esdras, at which time there was a new law made -namely,
for a kind of excommunication, or rather banishment, which had never been
before in Israel. Nevertheless it is not to be thought that the Sanhedrim
had not always that right, which from the time of Esdras is more
frequently exercised, of proposing to the people, but that they forebore
it in regard of the fulness and infallibility of the law already made,
whereby it was needless. Wherefore the function of this Council, which is
very rare in a senate, was executive, and consisted in the administration
of the law made; and whereas the Council itself is often understood in
Scripture by the priest and the Levite, there is no more in that save only
that the priests and the Levites, who otherwise had no power at all, being
in the younger years of this commonwealth, those that were best studied in
the laws were the most frequently elected into the Sanhedrim. For the
courts, consisting of three-and-twenty elders sitting in the gates of
every city, and the triumvirates of judges constituted almost in every
village, which were parts of the executive magistracy subordinate to the
Sanhedrim, I shall take them at better leisure, and in the larger
discourse; but these being that part of this commonwealth which was
instituted by Moses upon the advice of Jethro the priest of Midian (as I
conceive a heathen), are to me a sufficient warrant even from God himself,
who confirmed them, to make further use of human prudence, wherever I find
it bearing a testimony to itself, whether in heathen commonwealths or
others; and the rather, because so it is, that we who have the holy
Scriptures, and in them the original of a commonwealth, made by the same
hand that made the world, are either altogether blind or negligent of it;
while the heathens have all written theirs, as if they had had no other
copy; as, to be more brief in the present account of that which you shall
have more at large hereafter:

Athens consisted of the Senate of the Bean proposing, of the Church or
Assembly of the people resolving, and too often debating, which was the
ruin of it; as also of the Senate of the Areopagus, the nine archons, with
divers other magistrates, executing.

Lacedaemon consisted of the Senate proposing, of the Church or
congregation of the people resolving only, and never debating, which was
the long life of it; and of the two kings, the court of the ephors, with
divers other magistrates, executing.

Carthage consisted of the Senate proposing and sometimes resolving too,
of the people resolving and sometimes debating too, for which fault she
was reprehended by Aristotle; and she had her suffetes, and her hundred
men, with other magistrates, executing.

Rome consisted of the Senate proposing, the concio or people resolving,
and too often debating, which caused her storms; as also of the consuls,
censors, aediles, tribunes, praetors, quaestors, and other magistrates,
executing.

Venice consists of the Senate, or pregati, proposing, and sometimes
resolving too, of the great Council or Assembly of the people, in whom the
result is constitutively; as also of the doge, the signory, the censors,
the dieci, the quazancies, and other magistrates, executing.

The proceeding of the Commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland is of a
like nature, though after a more obscure manner; for the sovereignties,
whether cantons, provinces, or cities, which are the people, send their
deputies, commissioned and instructed by themselves (wherein they reserve
the result in their own power), to the provincial or general convention,
or Senate, where the deputies debate, but have no other power of result
than what was conferred upon them by the people, or is further conferred
by the same upon further occasion. And for the executive part they have
magistrates or judges in every canton, province, or city, besides those
which are more public, and relate to the league, as for adjusting
controversies between one canton, province, or city and another, or the
like between such persons as are not of the same canton, province, or
city.

But that we may observe a little further how the heathen politicians
have written, not only out of nature, but as it were out of Scripture: as
in the Commonwealth of Israel, God is said to have been king, so the
commonwealth where the law is king, is said by Aristotle to be "the
kingdom of God." And where by the lusts or passions of men a power is
set above that of the law deriving from reason, which is the dictate of
God, God in that sense is rejected or deposed that he should not reign
over them, as he was in Israel. And yet Leviathan will have it that "by
reading of these Greek and Latin [he might as well in this sense have said
Hebrew] authors, young men, and all others that are unprovided of the
antidote of solid reason, receiving a strong and delightful impression of
the great exploits of war achieved by the conductors of their armies,
receive withal a pleasing idea of all they have done besides, and imagine
their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the emulation of
particular men, but from the virtue of their popular form of government,
not considering the frequent seditions and civil wars produced by the
imperfection of their polity." Where, first, the blame he lays to the
heathen authors, is in his sense laid to the Scripture; and whereas he
holds them to be young men, or men of no antidote that are of like
opinions, it should seem that Machiavel, the sole retriever of this
ancient prudence, is to his solid reason a beardless boy that has newly
read Livy. And how solid his reason is, may appear where he grants the
great prosperity of ancient commonwealths, which is to give up the
controversy. For such an effect must have some adequate cause, which to
evade he insinuates that it was nothing else but the emulation of
particular men, as if so great an emulation could have been generated
without as great virtue, so great virtue without the best education, and
best education without the best law, or the best laws any otherwise than
by the excellency of their polity.

But if some of these commonwealths, as being less perfect in their
polity than others, have been more seditious, it is not more an argument
of the infirmity of this or that commonwealth in particular, than of the
excellency of that kind of polity in general, which if they, that have not
altogether reached, have nevertheless had greater prosperity, what would
befall them that should reach?

In answer to which question let me invite Leviathan, who of all other
governments gives the advantage to monarchy for perfection, to a better
disquisition of it by these three assertions.

The first, that the perfection of government lies upon such a libration
in the frame of it, that no man or men in or under it can have the
interest, or, having the interest, can have the power to disturb it with
sedition.

The second, that monarchy, reaching the perfection of the kind, reaches
not to the perfection of government, but must have some dangerous flaw in
it.

The third, that popular government, reaching the perfection of the kind,
reaches the perfection of government, and has no flaw in it.

The first assertion requires no proof.

For the proof of the second, monarchy, as has been shown, is of two
kinds: the one by arms, the other by a nobility and there is no other kind
in art or nature; for if there have 'been anciently some governments
called kingdoms, as one of the Goths in Spain, and another of the Vandals
in Africa, where the King ruled without a nobility and by a council of the
people only it is expressly said by the authors that mention them that
the, kings were but the captains, and that the people not only gave them
laws, but deposed them as often as they pleased. Nor is it possible in
reason that it should be otherwise in like cases; wherefore these were
either no monarchies, or had greater flaws in them than any other.

But for a monarchy by arms, as that of the Turk (which, of all models
that ever were, comes up to the perfection of the kind), it is not in the
wit or power of man to cure it of this dangerous flaw, that the Janizaries
have frequent interest and perpetual power to raise sedition, and to tear
the magistrate, even the prince himself, in pieces. Therefore the monarchy
of Turkey is no perfect government.

And for a monarchy by nobility, as of late in Oceana (which of all other
models, before the declination of it, came up to the perfection in that
kind), it was not in the power or wit of man to cure it of that dangerous
flaw; that the nobility had frequent interest and perpetual power by their
retainers and tenants to raise sedition; and (whereas the Janizaries
occasion this kind of calamity no sooner than they make an end of it) to
levy a lasting war, to the vast effusion of blood, and that even upon
occasions wherein the people, but for their dependence upon their lords,
had no concernment, as in the feud of the Red and White. The like has been
frequent in Spain, France, Germany, and other monarchies of this kind;
wherefore monarchy by a nobility is no perfect government.

For the proof of the third assertion: Leviathan yields it to me, that
there is no other commonwealth but monarchical or popular; wherefore if no
monarchy be a perfect government, then either there is no perfect
government, or it must be popular, for which kind of constitution I have
something more to say than Leviathan has said or ever will be able to say
for monarchy. As,

First, that it is the government that was never conquered by any
monarch, from the beginning of the world to this day, for if the
commonwealths of Greece came under the yoke of the Kings of Macedon, they
were first broken by themselves.

Secondly, that it is the government that has frequently led mighty
monarchs in triumph.

Thirdly, that it is the government, which, if it has been seditious, it
has not been so from any imperfection in the kind, but in the particular
constitution; which, wherever the like has happened, must have been
unequal.

Fourthly, that it is the government, which, if it has been anything near
equal, was never seditious; or let him show me what sedition has happened
in Lacedaemon or Venice.

Fifthly, that it is the government, which, attaining to perfect
equality, has such a libration in the frame of it, that no man living can
show which way any man or men, in or under it, can contract any such
interest or power as should be able to disturb the commonwealth with
sedition, wherefore an equal commonwealth is that only which is without
flaw and contains in it the full perfection of government. But to return.

By what has been shown in reason and experience, it may appear, that
though commonwealths in general be governments of the senate proposing,
the people resolving, and the magistracy executing, yet some are not so
good at these orders as others, through some impediment or defect in the
frame, balance, or capacity of them, according to which they are of divers
kinds.

The first division of them is into such as are single, as Israel,
Athens, Lacedaemon, etc.; and such as are by leagues, as those of the
Achaeans, AEtolians, Lycians, Switz, and Hollanders.

The second (being Machiavel's) is into such as are for preservation, as
Lacedaemon and Venice, and such as are for increase, as Athens and Rome;
in which I can see no more than that the former takes in no more citizens
than are necessary for defence, and the latter so many as are capable of
increase.

The third division (unseen hitherto) is into equal and Unequal, and this
is the main point, especially as to domestic peace and tranquillity; for
to make a commonwealth unequal, is to divide it into parties, which sets
them at perpetual variance, the one party endeavoring to preserve their
eminence and inequality and the other to attain to equality; whence the
people of Rome derived their perpetual strife with the nobility and
Senate. But in an equal commonwealth there can be no more strife than
there can be overbalance in equal weights; wherefore the Commonwealth of
Venice, being that which of all others is the most equal in the
constitution, is that wherein there never happened any strife between the
Senate and the people.

An equal commonwealth is such a one as is equal both in the balance or
foundation, and in the superstructure; that is to say, in her agrarian law
and in her rotation.

An equal agrarian is a perpetual law, establishing and preserving the
balance of dominion by such a distribution, that no one man or number of
men, within the compass of the few or aristocracy, can come to overpower
the whole people by their possessions in lands.

As the agrarian answers to the foundation, so does rotation to the
superstructures.

Equal rotation is equal vicissitude in government, or succession to
magistracy conferred for such convenient terms, enjoying equal vacations,
as take in the whole body by parts, succeeding others, through the free
election or suffrage of the people.

The contrary, whereunto is prolongation of magistracy, which, trashing
the wheel of rotation, destroys the life or natural motion of a
commonwealth.

The election or suffrage of the people is most free, where it is made or
given in such a manner that it can neither oblige nor disoblige another,
nor through fear of an enemy, or bashfulness toward a friend, impair a
man's liberty.

Wherefore, says Cicero, the tablet or ballot of the people of Rome (who
gave their votes by throwing tablets or little pieces of wood secretly
into urns marked for the negative or affirmative) was a welcome
constitution to the people, as that which, not impairing the assurance of
their brows, increased the freedom of their judgment. I have not stood
upon a more particular description of this ballot, because that of Venice
exemplified in the model is of all others the most perfect.

An equal commonwealth (by that which has been said) is a government
established upon an equal agrarian, arising into the superstructures or
three orders, the Senate debating and proposing, the people resolving, and
the magistracy executing, by an equal rotation through the suffrage of the
people given by the ballot. For though rotation may be without the ballot,
and the ballot without rotation, yet the ballot not only as to the ensuing
model includes both, but is by far the most equal way; for which cause
under the name of the ballot I shall hereafter understand both that and
rotation too.

Now having reasoned the principles of an equal commonwealth, I should
come to give an instance of such a one in experience, if I could find it;
but if this work be of any value, it lies in that it is the first example
of a commonwealth that is perfectly equal. For Venice, though it comes the
nearest, yet is a commonwealth for preservation; and such a one,
considering the paucity of citizens taken in, and the number not taken in,
is externally unequal; and though every commonwealth that holds provinces
must in that regard be such, yet not to that degree. Nevertheless, Venice
internally, and for her capacity, is by far the most equal, though it has
not, in my judgment, arrived at the full perfection of equality; both
because her laws supplying the defect of an agrarian are not so clear nor
effectual at the foundation, nor her superstructures, by the virtue of her
ballot or rotation, exactly librated; in regard that through the paucity
of her citizens her greater magistracies are continually wheeled through a
few hands, as is confessed by Janotti, where he says, that if a gentleman
comes once to be Savio di terra ferma, it seldom happens that he fails
from thenceforward to be adorned with some one of the greater
magistracies, as Savi di mare, Savi di terra ferma, Savi Grandi,
counsellors, those of the decemvirate or dictatorian council, the
aurogatori, or censors, which require no vacation or interval. Wherefore
if this in Venice, or that in Lacedaemon, where the kings were hereditary,
and the Senators (though elected by the people) for life, cause no
inequality (which is hard to be conceived) in a commonwealth for
preservation, or such a one as consists of a few citizens; yet is it
manifest that it would cause a very great one in a commonwealth for
increase, or consisting of the many, which, by engrossing the magistracies
in a few hands, would be obstructed in their rotation.

But there be who say (and think it a strong objection) that, let a
commonwealth be as equal as you can imagine, two or three men when all is
done will govern it; and there is that in it which, notwithstanding the
pretended sufficiency of a popular State, amounts to a plain confession of
the imbecility of that policy, and of the prerogative of monarchy;
forasmuch as popular governments in difficult cases have had recourse to
dictatorian power, as in Rome.

To which I answer, that as truth is a spark to which objections are like
bellows, so in this respect our commonwealth shines; for the eminence
acquired by suffrage of the people in a commonwealth, especially if it be
popular and equal, can be ascended by no other steps than the universal
acknowledgment of virtue: and where men excel in virtue, the commonwealth
is stupid and unjust, if accordingly they do not excel in authority.
Wherefore this is both the advantage of virtue, which has her due
encouragement, and of the commonwealth, which has her due services. These
are the philosophers which Plato would have to be princes, the princes
which Solomon would have to be mounted, and their steeds are those of
authority, not empire; or, if they be buckled to the chariot of empire, as
that of the dictatorian power, like the chariot of the sun, it is glorious
for terms and vacations or intervals. And as a commonwealth is a
government of laws and not of men, so is this the principality of virtue,
and not of man; if that fail or set in one, it rises in another who is
created his immediate successor. And this takes away that vanity from
under the sun, which is an error proceeding more or less from all other
rulers under heaven but an equal commonwealth.

These things considered, it will be convenient in this place to speak a
word to such as go about to insinuate to the nobility or gentry a fear of
the people, or to the people a fear of the nobility or gentry; as if their
interests were destructive to each other. When indeed an army may as well
consist of soldiers without officers, or of officers without soldiers, as
a commonwealth, especially such a one as is capable of greatness, of a
people without a gentry, or of a gentry without a people. Wherefore this,
though not always so intended, as may appear by Machiavel, who else would
be guilty, is a pernicious error. There is something first in the making
of a commonwealth, then in the governing of it, and last of all in the
leading of its armies, which, though there be great divines, great
lawyers, great men in all professions, seems to be peculiar only to the
genius of a gentleman.

For so it is in the universal series of story, that if any man has
founded a commonwealth, he was first a gentleman. Moses had his education
by the daughter of Pharaoh; Theseus and Solon, of noble birth, were held
by the Athenians worthy to be kings; Lycurgus was of the royal blood;
Romulus and Numa princes; Brutus and Publicola patricians; the Gracchi,
that lost their lives for the people of Rome and the restitution of that
commonwealth, were the sons of a father adored with two triumphs, and of
Cornelia the daughter of Scipio, who being demanded in marriage by King
Ptolemy, disdained to become the Queen of Egypt. And the most renowned
Olphaus Megaletor, sole legislator, as you will see anon, of the
Commonwealth of Oceana, was derived from a noble family; nor will it be
any occasion of scruple in this case, that Leviathan affirms the politics
to be no ancienter than his book "De Cive." Such also as have
got any fame in the civil government of a commonwealth, or by the leading
of its armies, have been gentlemen; for so in all other respects were
those plebeian magistrates elected by the people of Rome, being of known
descents and of equal virtues, except only that they were excluded from
the name by the usurpation of the patricians. Holland, through this defect
at home, has borrowed princes for generals, and gentlemen of divers
nations for commanders: and the Switzers, if they have any defect in this
kind, rather lend their people to the colors of other princes, than make
that noble use of them at home which should assert the liberty of mankind.
For where there is not a nobility to hearten the people, they are
slothful, regardless of the world, and of the public interest of liberty,
as even those of Rome had been without their gentry: wherefore let the
people embrace the gentry in peace, as the light of their eyes; and in
war, as the trophy of their arms; and if Cornelia disdained to be Queen of
Egypt, if a Roman consul looked down from his tribunal upon the greatest
king, let the nobility love and cherish the people that afford them a
throne so much higher in a commonwealth, in the acknowledgment of their
virtue, than the crowns of monarchs.

But if the equality of a commonwealth consist in the equality first of
the agrarian, and next of the rotation, then the inequality of a
commonwealth must consist in the absence or inequality of the agrarian, or
of the rotation, or of both.

Israel and Lacedaemon, which commonwealths (as the people of this, in
Josephus, claims kindred of that) have great resemblance, were each of
them equal in their agrarian, and unequal in their rotation, especially
Israel, where the Sanhedrim, or Senate, first elected by the people, as
appears by the words of Moses, took upon them ever after, without any
precept of God, to substitute their successors by ordination; which having
been there of civil use, as excommunication, community of goods, and other
customs of the Essenes, who were many of them converted, came afterward to
be introduced into the Christian Church. And the election of the judge,
suffes, or dictator, was irregular, both for the occasion, the term, and
the vacation of that magistracy. As you find in the book of Judges, where
it is often repeated, that in those days there was no king in Israel --
that is, no judge; and in the first of Samuel, where Eli judged Israel
forty years, and Samuel, all his life. In Lacedaemon the election of the
Senate being by suffrage of the people, though for life, was not
altogether so unequal, yet the hereditary right of kings, were it not for
the agrarian, had ruined her.

Athens and Rome were unequal as to their agrarian, that of Athens being
infirm, and this of Rome none at all; for if it were more anciently
carried it was never observed. Whence, by the time of Tiberius Gracchus,
the nobility had almost eaten the people quite out of their lands, which
they held in the occupation of tenants and servants, whereupon the remedy
being too late, and too vehemently applied, that commonwealth was ruined.

These also were unequal in their rotation, but in a contrary manner.
Athens, in regard that the Senate (chosen at once by lot, not by suffrage,
and changed every year, not in part, but in the whole) consisted not of
the natural aristocracy, nor sitting long enough to understand or to be
perfect in their office, had no sufficient authority to restrain the
people from that perpetual turbulence in the end, which was their ruin,
notwithstanding the efforts of Nicias, who did all a man could do to help
it. But as Athens, by the headiness of the people, so Rome fell by the
ambition of the nobility, through the want of an equal rotation; which, if
the people had got into the Senate, and timely into the magistracies
(whereof the former was always usurped by the patricians, and the latter
for the most part) they had both carried and held their agrarian, and that
had rendered that commonwealth immovable.

But let a commonwealth be equal or unequal, it must consist, as has been
shown by reason and all experience, of the three general orders; that is
to say, of the Senate debating and proposing, of the people resolving, and
of the magistracy executing. Wherefore I can never wonder enough at
Leviathan, who, without any reason or example, will have it that a
commonwealth consists of a single person, or of a single assembly; nor can
I sufficiently pity those "thousand gentlemen, whose minds, which
otherwise would have wavered, he has framed (as is affirmed by himself) in
to a conscientious obedience (for so he is pleased to call it) of such a
government."

But to finish this part of the discourse, which I intend for as complete
an epitome of ancient prudence, and in that of the whole art of politics,
as I am able to frame in so short a time:

The two first orders, that is to say, the Senate and the people, are
legislative, whereunto answers that part of this science which by
politicians is entitled "of laws;" and the third order is
executive, to which answers that part of the same science which is styled
"of the frame and course of courts or judicatories." A word to
each of these will be necessary.

And first for laws: they are either ecclesiastical or civil, such as
concern religion or government.

Laws, ecclesiastical, or such as concern religion, according to the
universal course of ancient prudence, are in the power of the magistrate;
but, according to the common practice of modern prudence, since the
papacy, torn out of his hands.

But, as a government pretending to liberty, and yet suppressing liberty
of conscience (which, because religion not according to a man's conscience
can to him be none at all, is the main) must be a contradiction, so a man
that, pleading for the liberty of private conscience, refuses liberty to
the national conscience, must be absurd.

A commonwealth is nothing else but the national conscience. And if the
conviction of a man's private conscience produces his private religion,
the conviction of the national conscience must produce a national
religion. Whether this be well reasoned, as also whether these two may
stand together, will best be shown by the examples of the ancient
commonwealths taken in their order.

In that of Israel the government of the national religion appertained
not to the priests and Levites, otherwise than as they happened to be of
the Sanhedrim, or Senate, to which they had no right at all but by
election. It is in this capacity therefore that the people are commanded,
under pain of death, "to hearken to them, and to do according to the
sentence of the law which they should teach;" but in Israel the law
ecclesiastical and civil was the same, therefore the Sanhedrim, having the
power of one, had the power of both. But as the national religion
appertained to the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim, so the liberty of
conscience appertained, from the same date, and by the same right, to the
prophets and their disciples; as where it is said, "I will raise up a
prophet; and whoever will not hearken to my words which he shall speak in
my name, I will require it of him." The words relate to prophetic
right, which was above all the orders of this commonwealth; whence Elijah
not only refused to obey the King, but destroyed his messengers with fire.
And whereas it was not lawful by the national religion to sacrifice in any
other place than the Temple, a prophet was his own temple, and might
sacrifice where he would, as Elijah did in Mount Carmel. By this right
John the Baptist and our Saviour, to whom it more particularly related,
had their disciples, and taught the people, whence is derived our present
right of gathered congregations; wherefore the Christian religion grew up
according to the orders of the Commonwealth of Israel, and not against
them. Nor was liberty of conscience infringed by this government, till the
civil liberty of the same was lost, as under Herod, Pilate, and Tiberius,
a three-piled tyranny.

To proceed, Athens preserved her religion, by the testimony of Paul,
with great superstition: if Alcibiades, that atheistical fellow had not
showed them a pair of heels, they had shaven off his head for shaving
their Mercuries, and making their gods look ridiculously upon them without
beards. Nevertheless, if Paul reasoned with them, they loved news, for
which he was the more welcome; and if he converted Dionysius the
Areopagite, that is, one of the senators, there followed neither any hurt
to him, nor loss of honor to Dionysius. And for Rome, if Cicero, in his
most excellent book "De Natura Deorum," overthrew the national
religion of that commonwealth, he was never the further from being consul.
But there is a meanness and poorness in modern prudence, not only to the
damage of civil government, but of religion itself; for to make a man in
matter of religion, which admits not of sensible demonstration (jurare in
verba magistri), engage to believe no otherwise than is believed by my
lord bishop, or Goodman Presbyter is a pedantism that has made the sword
to be a rod in the hands of schoolmasters; by which means, whereas the
Christian religion is the furthest of any from countenancing war, there
never was a war of religion but since Christianity, for which we are
beholden to the Pope; for the Pope not giving liberty of conscience to
princes and commonwealths, they cannot give that to their subjects which
they have not themselves, whence both princes and subjects, either through
his instigation or their own disputes, have introduced that execrable
custom, never known in the world before, of fighting for religion, and
denying the magistrate to have any jurisdiction concerning it, whereas the
magistrate's losing the power of religion loses the liberty of conscience,
which in that case has nothing to protect it. But if the people be
otherwise taught, it concerns them to look about them, and to distinguish
between the shrieking of the lapwing and the voice of the turtle.

To come to civil laws. If they stand one way and the balance another, it
is the case of a government which of necessity must be new modelled;
wherefore your lawyers, advising you upon the like occasions to fit your
government to their laws, are no more to be regarded than your tailor if
he should desire you to fit your body to his doublet. There is also danger
in the plausible pretence of reforming the law, except the government be
first good, in which case it is a good tree, and (trouble not yourselves
overmuch) brings not forth evil fruit; otherwise, if the tree be evil, you
can never reform the fruit, or if a root that is naught bring forth fruit
of this kind that seems to be good, take the more heed, for it is the
ranker poison. It was nowise probable, if Augustus had not made excellent
laws, that the bowels of Rome could have come to be so miserably eaten out
by the tyranny of Tiberius and his successors. The best rule as to your
laws in general is that they be few. Rome, by the testimony of Cicero, Was
best governed under those of the twelve tables; and by that of Tacitus,
Plurimoe leges, corruptissima respublica. You will be told that where the
laws be few they leave much to arbitrary power.; but where they be many,
they leave more, the laws in this case, according to Justinian and the
best lawyers, being as litigious as the suitors. Solon made few, Lycurgus
fewer, laws; and commonwealths have the fewest at this day of all other
governments.

Now to conclude this part with a word de judiciis, or of the
constitution or course of courts; it is a discourse not otherwise capable
of being well managed but by particular examples, both the constitution
and course of courts being divers in different governments, but best
beyond compare in Venice, where they regard not so much the arbitrary
power of their courts as the constitution of them, whereby that arbitrary
power being altogether unable to retard or do hurt to business, produces
and must produce the quickest despatch, and the most righteous dictates of
justice that are perhaps in human nature. The manner I shall not stand in
this place to describe, because it is exemplified at large in the
judicature of the people of Oceana. And thus much of ancient prudence, and
the first branch of this preliminary discourse.

THE SECOND PART OF THE PRELIMINARIES

In the second part I shall endeavor to show the rise, progress, and
declination of modern prudence.

The date of this kind of policy is to be computed, as was shown, from
those inundations of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Lombards that overwhelmed
the Roman Empire. But as there is no appearance in the bulk or
constitution of modern prudence, that it should ever have been able to
come up and grapple with the ancient, so something of necessity must have
interposed whereby this came to be enervated, and that to receive strength
and encouragement. And this was the execrable reign of the Roman emperors
taking rise from (that felix scelus) the arms of Caesar, in which storm
the ship of the Roman Commonwealth was forced to disburden itself of that
precious freight, which never since could emerge or raise its head but in
the Gulf of Venice.

It is said in Scripture, "Thy evil is of thyself, O Israel!"
to which answers that of the moralists, "None is hurt but by himself,"
as also the whole matter of the politics; at present this example of the
Romans, who, through a negligence committed in their agrarian laws, let in
the sink of luxury, and forfeited the inestimable treasure of liberty for
themselves and their posterity.

Their agrarian laws were such whereby their lands ought to have been
divided among the people, either without mention of a colony, in which
case they were not obliged to change their abode; or with mention and upon
condition of a colony, in which case they were to change their abode, and
leaving the city, to plant themselves upon the lands so assigned. The
lands assigned, or that ought to have been assigned, in either of these
ways, were of three kinds: such as were taken from the enemy and
distributed to the people; or such as were taken from the enemy, and,
under color of being reserved to the public use, were through stealth
possessed by the nobility; or such as were bought with the public money to
be distributed. Of the laws offered in these cases, those which divided
the lands taken from the enemy, or purchased with the public money, never
occasioned any dispute; but such as drove at dispossessing the nobility of
their usurpations, and dividing the common purchase of the sword among the
people, were never touched but they caused earthquakes, nor could they
ever be obtained by the people; or being obtained, be observed by the
nobility, who not only preserved their prey, but growing vastly rich upon
it, bought the people by degrees quite out of those shares that had been
conferred upon them. This the Gracchi coming too late to perceive found
the balance of the commonwealth to be lost; but putting the people (when
they had least force) by forcible means upon the recovery of it, did ill,
seeing it neither could nor did tend to any more than to show them by
worse effects that what the wisdom of their leaders had discovered was
true. For quite contrary to what has happened in Oceana, where, the
balance falling to the people, they have overthrown the nobility, that
nobility of Rome, under the conduct of Sylla, overthrew the people and the
commonwealth; seeing Sylla first introduced that new balance which was the
foundation of the succeeding monarchy, in the plantation of military
colonies, instituted by his distribution of the conquered lands, not now
of enemies, but of citizens, to forty-seven legions of his soldiers; so
that how he came to be perpetual dictator, or other magistrates to succeed
him in like power, is no miracle.

These military colonies (in which manner succeeding emperors continued,
as Augustus by the distribution of the veterans, whereby he had overcome
Brutus and Cassius to plant their soldiery) consisted of such as I
conceive were they that are called milites beneficiarii; in regard that
the tenure of their lands was by way of benefices, that is, for life, and
upon condition of duty or service in the war upon their own charge. These
benefices Alexander Severus granted to the heirs of the incumbents, but
upon the same conditions. And such was the dominion by which the Roman
emperors gave their balance. But to the beneficiaries, as was no less than
necessary for the safety of the prince, a matter of 8,000 by the example
of Augustus were added, which departed not from his sides, but were his
perpetual guard, called Pretorian bands; though these, according to the
incurable flaw already observed in this kind of government, became the
most frequent butchers of their lords that are to be found in story. Thus
far the Roman monarchy is much the same with that at this day in Turkey,
consisting of a camp and a horse-quarter; a camp in regard of the Spahis
and Janizaries, the perpetual guard of the prince, except they also chance
to be liquorish after his blood; and a horse-quarter in regard of the
distribution of his whole land to tenants for life, upon condition of
continual service, or as often as they shall be commanded at their own
charge by timars, being a word which they say signifies benefices, that it
shall save me a labor of opening the government.

But the fame of Mahomet and his prudence is especially founded in this,
that whereas the Roman monarchy, except that of Israel, was the most
imperfect, the Turkish is the most perfect that ever was. Which happened
in that the Roman (as the Israelitish of the Sanhedrim and the
congregation) had a mixture of the Senate and the people; and the Turkish
is pure. And that this was pure, and the other mixed, happened not through
the wisdom of the legislators, but the different genius of the nations;
the people of the Eastern parts, except the Israelites, which is to be
attributed to their agrarian, having been such as scarce ever knew any
other condition than that of slavery; and these of the Wester having ever
had such a relish of liberty, as through what despair soever could never
be brought to stand still while the yoke was putting on their necks, but
by being fed with some hopes of reserving to themselves some part of their
freedom.

Wherefore Julius Caesar (saith Suetonius) contented himself in naming
half the magistrates, to leave the rest to the suffrage of the people. And
Maecenas, though he would not have Augustus to give the people their
liberty, would not have him take it quite away. Whence this empire, being
neither hawk nor buzzard, made a flight accordingly; and the prince being
perpetually tossed (having the avarice of the soldiery on this hand to
satisfy upon the people, and the Senate and the people on the other to be
defended from the soldiery), seldom died any other death than by one horn
of this dilemma, as is noted more at large by Machiavel.

But the Pretorian bands, those bestial executioners of their captain's
tyranny upon others, and of their own upon him, having continued from the
time of Augustus, were by Constantine the Great (incensed against them for
taking part with his adversary Maxentius) removed from their strong
garrison which they held in Rome, and distributed into divers provinces.
The benefices of the soldiers that were hitherto held for life and upon
duty, were by this prince made hereditary, so that the whole foundation
whereupon this empire was first built being now removed, shows plainly
that the emperors must long before this have found out some other way of
support; and this was by stipendiating the Goths, a people that, deriving
their roots from the northern parts of Germany, or out of Sweden, had,
through their victories obtained against Domitian, long since spread their
branches to so near a neighborhood with the Roman territories that they
began to overshadow them. For the emperors making use of them in their
armies, as the French do at this day of the Switz, gave them that under
the notion of a stipend, which they received as tribute, coming, if there
were any default in the payment, so often to distrain for it, that in the
time of Honorius they sacked Rome, and possessed themselves of Italy. And
such was the transition of ancient into modern prudence, or that breach,
which being followed in every part of the Roman Empire with inundations of
Vandals, Huns, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, overwhelmed ancient languages,
learning, prudence, manners, cities, changing the names of rivers,
countries, seas, mountains, and men; Camillus, Caesar, and Pompey, being
come to Edmund, Richard, and Geoffrey.

To open the groundwork or balance of these new politicians: "Feudum,"
says Calvin the lawyer, "is a Gothic word of divers significations;
for it is taken either for war, or for a possession of conquered lands,
distributed by the victor to such of his captains and soldiers as had
merited in his wars, upon condition to acknowledge him to be their
perpetual lord, and themselves to be his subjects."

Of these there were three kinds or orders: the first of nobility
distinguished by the titles of dukes, marquises, earls, and these being
gratified with the cities, castles, and villages of the conquered
Italians, their feuds participated of royal dignity, and were called
regalia, by which they had right to coin money, create magistrates, take
toll, customs, confiscations, and the like.

Feuds of the second order were such as, with the consent of the King,
were bestowed by these feudatory princes upon men of inferior quality,
called their barons, on condition that next to the King they should defend
the dignities and fortunes of their lords in arms.

The lowest order of feuds were such, as being conferred by those of the
second order upon private men, whether noble not noble, obliged them in
the like duty to their superiors; the were called vavasors. And this is
the Gothic balance, by which all the kingdoms this day in Christendom were
at first erected; for which cause, if I had time, I should open in this
place the Empire of Germany, and the Kingdoms of France, Spain, and
Poland; but so much as has been said being sufficient for the discovery of
the principles of modern prudence in general, I shall divide the remainder
of my discourse, which is more particular, into three parts:

The first, showing the constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana;

The second, the dissolution of the same; and

The third, the generation of the present commonwealth.

The constitution of the late monarchy of Oceana is to be considered in
relation to the different nations by whom it has been successively subdued
and governed. The first of these were the Romans, the second the Teutons,
the third the Scandians, and the fourth the Neustrians.

The government of the Romans, who held it as a province, I shall omit,
because I am to speak of their provincial government in another place,
only it is to be remembered here, that if we have given over running up
and down naked, and with dappled hides, learned to write and read, and to
be instructed with good arts, for all these we are beholden to the Romans,
either immediately or mediately by the Teutons; for that the Teutons had
the arts from no other hand is plain enough by their language, which has
yet no word to signify either writing or reading, but what is derived from
the Latin. Furthermore, by the help of these arts so learned, we have been
capable of that religion which we have long since received; wherefore it
seems to me that we ought not to detract from the memory of the Romans, by
whose means we are, as it were, of beasts become men, and by whose means
we might yet of obscure and ignorant men (if we thought not too well of
ourselves) become a wise and a great people.

The Romans having governed Oceana provincially, the Teutons were the
first that introduced the form of the late monarchy. To these succeeded
the Scandians, of whom (because their reign was short, as also because
they made little alteration in the government as to the form) I shall take
no notice. But the Teutons going to work upon the Gothic balance, divided
the whole nation into three sorts of feuds, that of ealdorman, that of
king's thane, and that of middle thane.

When the kingdom was first divided into precincts will be as hard to
show as when it began first to be governed. It being impossible that there
should be any government without some division. The division that was in
use with the Teutons was by counties, and every county had either its
ealdorman or high reeve. The title of ealdorman came in time to eorl, or
erl, and that of high reeve to high sheriff.

Earl of the shire or county denoted the king's thane, or tenant by grand
sergeantry or knight's service, in chief or in capite; his possessions
were sometimes the whole territory from whence he had his denomination,
that is, the whole county; sometimes more than one county, and sometimes
less, the remaining part being in the crown. He had also sometimes a
third, or some other customary part of the profits of certain cities,
boroughs, or other places within his earldom. For an example of the
possessions of earls in ancient times, Ethelred had to him and his heirs
the whole Kingdom of Mercia, containing three or four counties; and there
were others that had little less.

King's thane was also an honorary title, to which he was qualified that
had five hides of land held immediately of the King by service of personal
attendance; insomuch that if a churl or countryman had thriven to this
proportion, having a church, a kitchen, a bell-house (that is, a hall with
a bell in it to call his family to dinner), a borough-gate with a seat
(that is, a porch) of his own, and any distinct office in the King's
court, then was he the King's thane. But the proportion of a hide-land,
otherwise called caruca, or a plough-land, is difficult to be understood,
because it was not certain; nevertheless it is generally conceived to be
so much as may be managed with one plough, and would yield the maintenance
of the same, with the appurtenances in all kinds.

The middle thane was feudal, but not honorary; he was also called a
vavasor, and his lands a vavasory, which held of some mesne lord, and not
immediately of the King.

Possessions and their tenures, being of this nature, show the balance of
the Teuton monarchy, wherein the riches of earls were so vast that to
arise from the balance of their dominion to their power, they were not
only called reguli, or little kings, but were such indeed; their
jurisdiction being of two sorts, either that which was exercised by them
in the court of their countries, or in the high court of the kingdom.

In the territory denominating an earl, if it were all his own, the
courts held, and the profits of that jurisdiction were to his own use and
benefit. But if he had but some part of his county, then his jurisdiction
and courts, saving perhaps in those possessions that were his own, were
held by him to the King's use and benefit; that is, he commonly supplied
the office which the sheriffs regularly executed in counties that had no
earls, and whence they came to be called viscounts. The court of the
county that had an earl was held by the earl and the bishop of the
diocese, after the manner of the sheriffs' turns to this day; by which
means both the ecclesiastical and temporal laws were given in charge
together to the country. The causes of vavasors or vavasories appertained
to the cognizance of this court, where wills were proved, judgment and
execution given, cases criminal and civil determined.

The King's thanes had the like jurisdiction in their thane lands as
lords in their manors, where they also kept courts.

Besides these in particular, both the earls and King's thanes, together
with the bishops, abbots, and vavasors, or middle thanes, had in the high
court or parliament in the kingdom a more public jurisdiction, consisting
first of deliberative power for advising upon and assenting to new laws;
secondly, giving counsel in matters of state and thirdly, of judicature
upon suits and complaints. I shall not omit to enlighten the obscurity of
these times, in which there is little to be found of a methodical
constitution of this high court, by the addition of an argument, which I
conceive to bear a strong testimony to itself, though taken out of a late
writing that conceals the author. "It is well known," says he, "that
in every quarter of the realm a great many boroughs do yet send burgesses
to the parliament which nevertheless be so anciently and so long since
decayed and gone to naught, that they cannot be showed to have been of any
reputation since the Conquest, much less to have obtained any such
privilege by the grant of any succeeding king: wherefore these must have
had this right by more ancient usage, and before the Conquest, they being
unable now to show whence they derived it."

This argument, though there be more, I shall pitch upon as sufficient to
prove: First, that the lower sort of the people had right to session in
Parliament during the time of the Teutons. Secondly, that they were
qualified to the same by election in their boroughs, and if knights of the
shire, as no doubt they are, be as ancient in the counties. Thirdly if it
be a good argument to say that the commons during the reign of the Teutons
were elected into Parliament because they are so now, and no man can show
when this custom began, I see not which way it should be an ill one to say
that the commons during the reign of the Teutons constituted also a
distinct house because they do so now, unless any man can show that they
did ever sit in the same house with the lords. Wherefore to conclude this
part, I conceive for these, and other reasons to be mentioned hereafter,
that the Parliament of the Teutons consisted of the King, the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons of the nation, notwithstanding the
style of divers acts of Parliament, which runs, as that of Magna Charta,
in the King's name only, seeing the same was nevertheless enacted by the
King, peers, and commons of the land, as is testified in those words by a
subsequent act.

The monarchy of the Teutons had stood in this posture about 220 years;
when Turbo, Duke of Neustria, making his claim to the crown of one of
their kings that died childless, followed it with successful arms, and,
being possessed of the kingdom, used it as conquered, distributing the
earldoms, thane-lands, bishoprics, and prelacies of the whole realm among
his Neustrians. From this time the earl came to be called comes, consul,
and dux, though consul and dux grew afterward out of use; the King's
thanes came to be called barons, and their lands baronies; the middle
thane holding still of a mesne lord, retained the name of vavasor.

The earl or comes continued to have the third part of the pleas of the
county paid to him by the sheriff or vice -- comes, now a distinct officer
in every county depending upon the King; saving that such earls as had
their counties to their own use were now counts-palatine, and had under
the King regal jurisdiction; insomuch that they constituted their own
sheriffs, granted pardons, and issued writs in their own names; nor did
the King's writ of ordinary justice run in their dominions till a late
statute, whereby much of this privilege was taken away.

For barons they came from henceforth to be in different times of three
kinds: barons by their estates and tenures, barons by writ, and barons
created by letters-patent. From Turbo the first to Adoxus the seventh king
from the Conquest, barons had their denomination from their possessions
and tenures. And these were either spiritual or temporal; for not only the
thanelands, but the possessions of bishops, as also of some twenty six
abbots, and two priors, were now erected into baronies, whence the lords
spiritual that had suffrage in the Teuton Parliament as spiritual lords
came to have it in the Neustrian Parliament as barons, and were made
subject, which they had not formerly been, to knights' service in chief.
Barony coming henceforth to signify all honorary possessions as well of
earls as barons, and baronage to denote all kinds of lords as well
spiritual as temporal having right to sit in Parliament, the baronies in
this sense were sometimes more, and sometimes fewer, but commonly about
200 or 250, containing in them a matter of 60,000 feuda militum, or
knights' fees, whereof some 28,000 were in the clergy.

It is ill-luck that no man can tell what the land of a knight's fee,
reckoned in some writs at £40 a year, and in others at £10, was
certainly worth, for by such a help we might have exactly demonstrated the
balance of this government. But, says Coke, it contained twelve
plough-lands, and that was thought to be the most certain account. But
this again is extremely uncertain; for one plough out of some land that
was fruitful might work more than ten out of some other that was barren.
Nevertheless, seeing it appears by Bracton, that of earldoms and baronies
it was wont to be said that the whole kingdom was composed, as also that
these, consisting of 60,000 knights' fees, furnished 60,000 men for the
King's service, being the whole militia of this monarchy, it cannot be
imagined that the vavasories or freeholds in the people amounted to any
considerable proportion. Wherefore the balance and foundation of this
government were in the 60,000 knights' fees, and these being possessed by
the 250 lords, it was a government of the few, or of the nobility, wherein
the people might also assemble, but could have no more than a mere name.
And the clergy, holding a third of the whole nation, as is plain by the
Parliament-roll, it is an absurdity (seeing the clergy of France came
first through their riches to be a state of that kingdom) to acknowledge
the people to have been a state of this realm, and not to allow it to the
clergy, who were so much more weighty in the balance, which is that of all
other whence a state or order in a government is denominated. Wherefore
this monarchy consisted of the King, and of the three ordines regni, or
estates, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons; it consisted
of these, I say, as to the balance, though, during the reign of some of
these kings, not as to the administration.

For the ambition of Turbo, and some of those that more immediately
succeeded him, to be absolute princes, strove against the nature of their
foundation, and, inasmuch as he had divided almost the whole realm among
his Neustrians, with some encouragement for a while. But the Neustrians,
while they were but foreign plants, having no security against the
natives, but in growing up by their princes' sides, were no sooner well
rooted in their vast dominions than they came up according to the
infallible consequence of the balance domestic, and, contracting the
national interest of the baronage, grew as fierce in the vindication of
the ancient rights and liberties of the same, as if they had been always
natives: whence, the kings being as obstinate on the one side for their
absolute power, as these on the other for their immunities, grew certain
wars, which took their denomination from the barons.

This fire about the middle of the reign of Adoxus began to break out.
And whereas the predecessors of this King had divers times been forced to
summon councils resembling those of the Teutons, to which the lords only
that were barons by dominion and tenure had hitherto repaired, Adoxus,
seeing the effects of such dominion, began first not to call such as were
barons by writ (for that was according to the practice of ancient times),
but to call such by writs as were otherwise no barons; by which means,
striving to avoid the consequence of the balance, in coming unwillingly to
set the government straight, he was the first that set it awry. For the
barons in his reign, and his successors, having vindicated their ancient
authority, restored the Parliament with all the rights and privileges of
the same, saving that from thenceforth the kings had found out a way
whereby to help themselves against the mighty by creatures of their own,
and such as had no other support but by their favor.. By which means this
government, being indeed the masterpiece of modern prudence, has been
cried up to the skies, as the only invention whereby at once to maintain
the sovereignty of a prince and the liberty of the people. Whereas,
indeed, it has been no other than a wrestling-match, wherein the nobility,
as they have been stronger, have thrown the King, or the King, if he has
been stronger, has thrown the nobility; or the King, where he has had a
nobility, and could bring them to his party has thrown the people, as in
France and Spain; or the people, where they have had no nobility, or could
get them to be of their party, have thrown the King, as in Holland, and of
later times in Oceana.

But they came not to this strength, but by such approaches and degrees
as remain to be further opened. For whereas the barons by writ, as the
sixty-four abbots and thirty-six priors that were so called, were but pro
temp ore, Dicotome, being the twelfth king from the Conquest, began to
make barons by letters-patent, with the addition of honorary pensions for
the maintenance of their dignities to them and their heirs; so that they
were hands in the King's purse and had no shoulders for his throne. Of
these, when the house of peers came once to be full, as will be seen
hereafter, there was nothing more empty. But for the present, the throne
having other supports, they did not hurt that so much as they did the
King; for the old barons, taking Dicotome's prodigality to such creatures
so ill that they deposed him, got the trick of it, and never gave over
setting up and pulling down their kings according to their various
interests, and that faction of the White and Red, into which they have
been thenceforth divided, till Panurgus, the eighteenth king from the
Conquest, was more by their favor than his right advanced to the crown.
This King, through his natural subtlety, reflecting at once upon the
greatness of their power, and the inconstancy of their favor, began to
find another flaw in this kind of government, which is also noted by
Machiavel namely, that a throne supported by a nobility is not so hard to
be ascended as kept warm. Wherefore his secret jealousy, lest the
dissension of the nobility, as it brought him in might throw him out, made
him travel in ways undiscovered by them, to ends as little foreseen by
himself, while to establish his own safety, he, by mixing water with their
wine, first began to open those sluices that have since overwhelmed not
the King only, but the throne. For whereas a nobility strikes not at the
throne, without which they cannot subsist, but at some king that they do
not like, popular power strikes through the King at the throne, as that
which is incompatible with it. Now that Panurgus, in abating the power of
the nobility, was the cause whence it came to fall into the hands of the
people, appears by those several statutes that were made in his reign, as
that for population, those against retainers, and that for alienations.

By the statute of population, all houses of husbandry that were used
with twenty acres of ground and upward, were to be maintained and kept up
forever with a competent proportion of land laid to them, and in no wise,
as appears by a subsequent statute, to be severed. By which means the
houses being kept up, did of necessity enforce dwellers; and the
proportion of land to be tilled being kept up, did of necessity enforce
the dweller not to be a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance,
that might keep hinds and servants and set the plough a-going. This did
mightily concern, says the historian of that prince, the might and manhood
of the kingdom, and in effect amortize a great part of the lands to the
hold and possession of the yeomanry or middle people, who living not in a
servile or indigent fashion, were much unlinked from dependence upon their
lords, and living in a free and plentiful manner, became a more excellent
infantry, but such a one upon which the lords had so little power, that
from henceforth they may be computed to have been disarmed.

And as they had lost their infantry after this manner, so their cavalry
and commanders were cut off by the statute of retainers; for whereas it
was the custom of the nobility to have younger brothers of good houses,
mettled fellows, and such as were knowing in the feats of arms about them,
they who were longer followed with so dangerous a train, escaped not such
punishments as made them take up.

Henceforth the country lives and great tables of the nobility, which no
longer nourished veins that would bleed for them, were fruitless and
loathsome till they changed the air, and of princes became courtiers;
where their revenues, never to have been exhausted by beef and mutton,
were found narrow, whence followed racking of rents, and at length sale of
lands, the riddance through the statute of alienations being rendered far
more quick and facile than formerly it had been through the new invention
of entails.

To this it happened that Coraunus, the successor of that King,
dissolving the abbeys, brought, with the declining state of the nobility,
so vast a prey to the industry of the people, that the balance of the
commonwealth was too apparently in the popular party to be unseen by the
wise Council of Queen Parthenia, who, converting her reign through the
perpetual love tricks that passed between her and her people into a kind
of romance, wholly neglected the nobility. And by these degrees came the
House of Commons to raise that head, which since has been so high and
formidable to their princes that they have looked pale upon those
assemblies. Nor was there anything now wanting to the destruction of the
throne, but that the people, not apt to see their own strength, should be
put to feel it; when a prince, as stiff in disputes as the nerve of
monarchy was grown slack, received that unhappy encouragement from his
clergy which became his utter ruin, while trusting more to their logic
than the rough philosophy of his Parliament, it came to an irreparable
breach; for the house of peers, which alone had stood in this gap, now
sinking down between the King and the commons, showed that Crassus was
dead and the isthmus broken. But a monarchy, divested of its nobility, has
no refuge under heaven but an army. Wherefore the dissolution of this
government caused the war, not the war the dissolution of this government.

Of the King's success with his arms it is not necessary to give any
further account than that they proved as ineffectual as his nobility; but
without a nobility or an army (as has been shown) there can be no
monarchy. Wherefore what is there in nature that can arise out of these
ashes but a popular government, or a new monarchy to be erected by the
victorious army?

To erect a monarchy, be it never so new, unless like Leviathan you can
hang it, as the country-fellow speaks, by geometry (for what else is it to
say, that every other man must give up his will to the will of this one
man without any other foundation?), it must stand upon old principles --
that is, upon a nobility or an army planted on a due balance of dominion.
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam, was an adage of Caesar, and there is no
standing for a monarchy unless it finds this balance, or makes it. If it
finds it, the work is done to its hand; for, where there is inequality of
estates, there must be inequality of power; and where there is inequality
of power, there can be no commonwealth. To make it, the sword must
extirpate out of dominion all other roots of power, and plant an army upon
that ground. An army may be planted nationally or provincially. To plant
it nationally, it must be in one of the four ways mentioned, that is,
either monarchically in part, as the Roman beneficiarii; or monarchically,
in the whole, as the Turkish Timariots; aristocratically that is, by earls
and barons, as the Neustrians were planted by Turbo; or democratically,
that is, by equal lots, as the Israelitish army in the land of Canaan by
Joshua. In every one of these ways there must not only be confiscations,
but confiscations to such a proportion as may answer to the work intended.

Confiscation of a people that never fought against you, but whose arms
you have borne, and in which you have been victorious, and this upon
premeditation and in cold blood, I should have thought to be against any
example in human nature, but for those alleged by Machiavel of Agathocles,
and Oliveretto di Fermo, the former whereof being captain-general of the
Syracusans, upon a day assembled the Senate and the people, as if he had
something to communicate with them, when at a sign given he cut the
senators in pieces to a man, and all the richest of the people, by which
means he came to be king. The proceedings of Oliveretto, in making himself
Prince of Fermo, were somewhat different in circumstances, but of the same
nature. Nevertheless Catiline, who had a spirit equal to any of these in
his intended mischief, could never bring the like to pass in Rome. The
head of a small commonwealth, such a one as was that of Syracuse or Fermo,
is easily brought to the block; but that a populous nation, such as Rome,
had not such a one, was the grief of Nero. If Sylvia or Caesar attained to
be princes, it was by civil war, and such civil war as yielded rich
spoils, there being a vast nobility to be confiscated; which also was the
case in Oceana, when it yielded earth by earldoms, and baronies to the
Neustrian for the plantation of his new potentates. Where a conqueror
finds the riches of a land in the hands of the few, the forfeitures are
easy, and amount to vast advantage; but where the people have equal
shares, the confiscation of many comes to little, and is not only
dangerous but fruitless.

The Romans, in one of their defeats of the Volsci, found among the
captives certain Tusculans, who, upon examination, confessed that the arms
they bore were by command of their State; whereupon information being
given to the Senate by the general Camillus, he was forthwith commanded to
march against Tusculum which doing accordingly, he found the Tusculan
fields full of husbandmen, that stirred not otherwise from the plough than
to furnish his army with all kinds of accommodations and victuals. Drawing
near to the city, he saw the gates wide open, the magistrates coming out
in their gowns to salute and bid him welcome; entering, the shops were all
at work, and open, the streets sounded with the noise of schoolboys at
their books; there was no face of war. Whereupon Camillus, causing the
Senate to assemble, told them, that though the art was understood, yet had
they at length found out the true arms whereby the Romans were most
undoubtedly to be conquered, for which cause he would not anticipate the
Senate, to which he desired them forthwith to send, which they did
accordingly; and their dictator with the rest of their ambassadors being
found by the Roman senators as they went into the house standing sadly at
the door were sent for in as friends, and not as enemies; where the
dictator having said, "If we have offended, the fault was not so
great as is our penitence and your virtue," the Senate gave them
peace forthwith, and soon after made the Tusculans citizens of Rome.

But putting the case, of which the world is not able to show an example,
that the forfeiture of a populous nation, not conquered, but friends, and
in cool blood, might be taken, your army must be planted in one of the
ways mentioned. To plant it in the way of absolute monarchy, that is, upon
feuds for life, such as the Timars, a country as large and fruitful as
that of Greece, would afford you but 16,000 Timariots, for that is the
most the Turk (being the best husband that ever was of this kind) makes of
it at this day: and if Oceana, which is less in fruitfulness by one-half,
and in extent by three parts, should have no greater a force, whoever
breaks her in one battle, may be sure she shall never rise; for such (as
was noted by Machiavel) is the nature of the Turkish monarchy, if you
break it in two battles, you have destroyed its whole militia, and the
rest being all slaves, you hold it without any further resistance.
Wherefore the erection of an absolute monarchy in Oceana, or in any other
country that is no larger, without making it a certain prey to the first
invader is altogether impossible.

To plant by halves, as the Roman emperors did their beneficiaries, or
military colonies, it must be either for life; and this an army of
Oceaners in their own country, especially having estates of inheritance,
will never bear because such an army so planted is as well confiscated as
the people; nor had the Mamelukes been contented with such usage in Egypt,
but that they were foreigners, and daring not to mix with the natives, it
was of absolute necessity to their being.

Or planting them upon inheritance, whether aristocratically as the
Neustrians, or democratically as the Israelites, they grow up by certain
consequences into the national interest, and this, if they be planted
popularly, comes to a commonwealth; if by way of nobility, to a mixed
monarchy, which of all other will be found to be the only kind of monarchy
whereof this nation, or any other that is of no greater extent, has been
or can be capable; for if the Israelites, though their democratical
balance, being fixed by their agrarian, stood firm, be yet found to have
elected kings, it was because, their territory lying open, they were
perpetually invaded, and being perpetually invaded, turned themselves to
anything which, through the want of experience, they thought might be a
remedy; whence their mistake in election of their kings, under whom they
gained nothing, but, on the contrary, lost all they had acquired by their
commonwealth, both estates and liberties, is not only apparent, but
without parallel. And if there have been, as was shown, a kingdom of the
Goths in Spain, and of the Vandals in Asia, consisting of a single person
and a Parliament (taking a parliament to be a council of the people only,
without a nobility), it is expressly said of those councils that they
deposed their kings as often as they pleased; nor can there be any other
consequence of such a government, seeing where there is a council of the
people they do never receive laws, but give them; and a council giving
laws to a single person, he has no means in the world whereby to be any
more than a subordinate magistrate but force: in which case he is not a
single person and a parliament, but a single person and an army, which
army again must be planted as has been shown, or can be of no long
continuance.

It is true, that the provincial balance bring in nature quite contrary
to the national, you are no way to plant a provincial army upon dominion.
But then you must have a native territory in strength, situation, or
government, able to overbalance the foreign, or you can never hold it.
That an army should in any other case be long supported by a mere tax, is
a mere fancy as void of all reason and experience as if a man should think
to maintain such a one by robbing of orchards; for a mere tax is but
pulling of plum-trees, the roots whereof are in other men's grounds, who,
suffering perpetual violence, come to hate the author of it; and it is a
maxim, that no prince that is hated by his people can be safe. Arms
planted upon dominion extirpate enemies and make friends; but maintained
by a mere tax, have enemies that have roots, and friends that have none.

To conclude, Oceana, or any other nation of no greater extent, must have
a competent nobility, or is altogether incapable of monarchy; for where
there is equality of estates, there must be equality of power, and where
there is equality of power, there can be no monarchy.

To come then to the generation of the commonwealth. It has been shown
how, through the ways and means used by Panurgus to abase the nobility,
and so to mend that flaw which we have asserted to be incurable in this
kind of constitution, he suffered the balance to fall into the power of
the people, and so broke the government; but the balance being in the
people, the commonwealth (though they do not see it) is already in the
nature of them. There wants nothing else but time, which is slow and
dangerous, or art, which would be more quick and secure, for the bringing
those native arms, wherewithal they are found already, to resist, they
know not how, everything that opposes them, to such maturity as may fix
them upon their own strength and bottom.

But whereas this art is prudence, and that part of prudence which
regards the present work is nothing else but the skill of raising such
superstructures of government as are natural to the known foundations,
they never mind the foundation, but through certain animosities, wherewith
by striving one against another they are infected, or through freaks, by
which, not regarding the course of things, nor how they conduce to their
purpose, they are given to building in the air, come to be divided and
subdivided into endless parties and factions, both civil and
ecclesiastical, which, briefly to open, I shall first speak of the people
in general, and then of their divisions.

A people, says Machiavel, that is corrupt, is not capable of a
commonwealth. But in showing what a corrupt people is, he has either
involved himself, or me; nor can I otherwise come out of the labyrinth,
than by saying, the balance altering a people, as to the foregoing
government, must of necessity be corrupt; but corruption in this sense
signifies no more than that the corruption of one government, as in
natural bodies, is the generation of another. Wherefore if the balance
alters from monarchy, the corruption of the people in this case is that
which makes them capable of a commonwealth. But whereas I am not ignorant
that the corruption which he means is in manners, this also is from the
balance. For the balance leading from monarchical into popular abates the
luxury of the nobility, and, enriching the people, brings the government
from a more private to a more public interest which coming nearer, as has
been shown, to justice and right reason, the people upon a like alteration
is so far from such a corruption of manners as should render them
incapable of a commonwealth, that of necessity they must thereby contract
such a reformation of manners as will bear no other kind of government. On
the other side, where the balance changes from popular to oligarchical or
monarchical, the public interest, with the reason and justice included in
the sane, becomes more private; luxury is introduced in the room of
temperance, and servitude in that of freedom, which causes such a
corruption of manners both in the nobility and people, as, by the example
of Rome in the time of the Triumvirs, is more at large discovered by the
author to have been altogether incapable of a commonwealth.

But the balance of Oceana changing quite contrary to that of Rome, the
manners of the people were not thereby corrupted, but, on the contrary,
adapted to a commonwealth. For differences of opinion in a people not
rightly informed of their balance, or a division into parties (while there
is not any common ligament of power sufficient to reconcile or hold them)
is no sufficient proof of corruption. Nevertheless, seeing this must needs
be matter of scandal and danger, it will not be amiss, in showing what
were the parties, to show what were their errors.

The parties into which this nation was divided, were temporal or
spiritual; and the temporal parties were especially two, the one
royalists, the other republicans, each of which asserted their different
causes, either out of prudence or ignorance, out of interest or
conscience.

For prudence, either that of the ancients is inferior to the modern,
which we have hitherto been setting face to face, that anyone may judge,
or that of the royalist must be inferior to that of the commonwealths man.
And for interest, taking the commonwealths man to have really intended the
public, for otherwise he is a hypocrite and the worst of men, that of the
royalist must of necessity have been more private. Wherefore, the whole
dispute will come upon matter of conscience, and this, whether it be urged
by the right of kings, the obligation of former laws, or of the oath of
allegiance, is absolved by the balance.

For if the right of kings were as immediately derived from the breath of
God as the life of man, yet this excludes not death and dissolution. But,
that the dissolution of the late monarchy was as natural as the death of
man, has been already shown. Wherefore it remains with the royalists to
discover by what reason or experience it is possible for a monarchy to
stand upon a popular balance; or, the balance being popular, as well the
oath of allegiance, as all other monarchical laws, imply an impossibility,
and are therefore void.

To the commonwealths man I have no more to say, but that if he excludes
any party, he is not truly such, nor shall ever found a commonwealth upon
the natural principle of the same, which is justice. And the royalist for
having not opposed a commonwealth in Oceana, where the laws were so
ambiguous that they might be eternally disputed and never reconciled, can
neither be justly for that cause excluded from his full and equal share in
the government; nor prudently for this reason, that a commonwealth
consisting of a party will be in perpetual labor for her own destruction:
whence it was that the Romans, having conquered the Albans, incorporated
them with equal right into the commonwealth. And if the royalists be "flesh
of your flesh," and nearer of blood than were the Albans to the
Romans, you being also both Christians, the argument is the stronger.
Nevertheless there is no reason that a commonwealth should any more favor
a party remaining in fixed opposition against it, than Brutus did his own
sons. But if it fixes them upon that opposition, it is its own fault, not
theirs; and this is done by excluding them. Men that have equal
possessions and the same security for their estates and their liberties
that you have, have the same cause with you to defend both; but if you
will liberty, though for monarchy; and be trampling, they fight for you
for tyranny, though under the name of a commonwealth: the nature of orders
in a government rightly instituted being void of all jealousy, because,
let the parties which it embraces be what they will, its orders are such
as they neither would resist if they could, nor could if they would, as
has been partly already shown, and will appear more at large by the
following model.

The parties that are spiritual are of more kinds than I need mention;
some for a national religion, and others for liberty of conscience, with
such animosity on both sides, as if these two could not consist together,
and of which I have already sufficiently spoken, to show that indeed the
one cannot well subsist without the other But they of all the rest are the
most dangerous, who, holding that the saints must govern, go about to
reduce the commonwealth to a party, as well for the reasons already shown,
as that their pretences are against Scripture, where the saints are
commanded to submit to the higher powers, and to be subject to the
ordinance of man. And that men, pretending under the notion of saints or
religion to civil power, have hitherto never failed to dishonor that
profession, the world is full of examples, whereof I shall confine myself
at present only to a couple, the one of old, the other of new Rome.

In old Rome, the patricians or nobility pretending to be the godly
party, were questioned by the people for engrossing all the magistracies
of that commonwealth, and had nothing to say why they did so, but that
magistracy required a kind of holiness which was not in the people; at
which the people were filled with such indignation as had come to cutting
of throats, if the nobility had not immediately laid by the insolency of
that plea; which nevertheless when they had done, the people for a long
time after continued to elect no other but patrician magistrates.

The example of new Rome in the rise and practice of the hierarchy (too
well known to require any further illustration) is far more immodest.

This has been the course of nature; and when it has pleased or shall
please God to introduce anything that is above the course of nature, he
will, as he has always done, confirm it by miracle; for so in his prophecy
of the reign of Christ upon earth he expressly promises, seeing that "the
souls of them that were beheaded for Jesus, shall be seen to live and
reign with him;" which will be an object of sense, the rather,
because the rest of the dead are not to live again till the thousand years
be finished. And it is not lawful for men to persuade us that a thing
already is, though there be no such object of our sense, which God has
told us shall not be till it be an object of our sense.

The saintship of a people as to government, consists in the election of
magistrates fearing God, and hating covetousness, and not in their
confining themselves, or being confined, to men of this or that party or
profession. It consists in making the most prudent and religious choice
they can; yet not in trusting to men, but, next God, to their own orders.
"Give us good men, and they will make us good laws," is the
maxim of a demagogue, and is (through the alteration which is commonly
perceivable in men, when they have power to work their own wills)
exceeding fallible. But "give us good orders, and they will make us
good men," is the maxim of a legislator, and the most infallible in
the politics.

But these divisions (however there be some good men that look sadly on
them) are trivial things; first as to the civil concern, because the
government, whereof this nation is capable, being once seen, takes in all
interests. And, secondly, as to the spiritual; because as the pretence of
religion has always been turbulent in broken governments, so where the
government has been sound and steady, religion has never shown itself with
any other face than that of its natural sweetness and tranquillity, nor is
there any reason why it should, wherefore the errors of the people are
occasioned by their governors. If they be doubtful of the way, or wander
from it, it is because their guides misled them; and the guides of the
people are never so well qualified for leading by any virtue of their own,
as by that of the government.

The government of Oceana (as it stood at the time whereof we discourse,
consisting of one single Council of the people, exclusively of the King
and the Lords) was called a Parliament: nevertheless the parliaments of
the Teutons and of the Neustrians consisted, as has been shown, of the
King, lords, and commons; wherefore this, under an old name, was a new
thing a parliament consisting of a single assembly elected by the people,
and invested with the whole power of the government, without any
covenants, conditions, or orders whatsoever. So new a thing, that neither
ancient nor modern prudence can show any avowed example of the like. And
there is scarce anything that seems to me so strange as that (whereas
there was nothing more familiar with these councillors than to bring the
Scripture to the house) there should not be a man of them that so much as
offered to bring the house to the Scripture, wherein, as has been shown,
is contained that original, whereof all the rest of the commonwealths seem
to be copies. Certainly if Leviathan (who is surer of nothing than that a
popular commonwealth consists but of one council) transcribed his doctrine
out of this assembly, for him to except against Aristotle and Cicero for
writing out of their own commonwealths was not so fair play; or if the
Parliament transcribed out of him, it had been an honor better due to
Moses. But where one of them should have an example but from the other, I
cannot imagine, there being nothing of this kind that I can find in story,
but the oligarchy of Athens, the Thirty Tyrants of the same, and the Roman
Decemvirs.

For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate or council
of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the people consisting of
5,000, but not producing them; wherein you have the definition of an
oligarchy, which is a single council both debating and resolving, dividing
and choosing, and what that must come to was shown by the example of the
girls, and is apparent by the experience of all times; wherefore the
thirty set up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had conquered Athens) are
called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only excepted, who will have them
against all the world to have been an aristocracy, but for what reason I
cannot imagine; these also, as void of any balance, having been void of
that which is essential to every commonwealth, whether aristocratical or
popular, except he be pleased with them, because that, according to the
testimony of Xenophon, they killed more men in eight months than the
Lacedaemonians had done in ten years; "oppressing the people (to use
Sir Walter Raleigh's words) with all base and intolerable slavery."

The usurped government of the Decemvirs in Rome was of the same kind.
Wherefore in the fear of God let Christian legislators (setting the
pattern given in the Mount on the one side, and these execrable examples
on the other) know the right hand from the left; and so much the rather,
because those things which do not conduce to the good of the governed are
fallacious, if they appear to be good for the governors. God, in
chastising a people, is accustomed to burn his rod. The empire of these
oligarchies was not so violent as short, nor did they fall upon the
people, but in their own immediate ruin. A council without a balance is
not a commonwealth, but an oligarchy; and every oligarchy, except it be
put to the defence of its wickedness or power against some outward danger,
is factious. Wherefore the errors of the people being from their governors
(which maxim in the politics bearing a sufficient testimony to itself, is
also proved by Machiavel), if the people of Oceana have been factious, the
cause is apparent, but what remedy?

In answer to this question, I come now to the army, of which the most
victorious captain and incomparable patriot, Olphaus Megaletor, was now
general, who being a much greater master of that art whereof I have made a
rough draught in these preliminaries, had such sad reflections upon the
ways and proceedings of the Parliament as cast him upon books and all
other means of diversion, among which he happened on this place of
Machiavel: "Thrice happy is that people which chances to have a man
able to give them such a government at once, as without alteration may
secure them of their liberties; seeing it was certain that Lacedaemon, in
observing the laws of Lycurgus, continued about 800 years without any
dangerous tumult or corruption." My lord general (as it is said of
Themistocles, that he could not sleep for the glory obtained by Miltiades
at the battle of Marathon) took so new and deep an impression at these
words of the much greater glory of Lycurgus, that, being on this side
assaulted with the emulation of his illustrious object, and on the other
with the misery of the nation, which seemed (as it were ruined by his
victory) to cast itself at his feet, he was almost wholly deprived of his
natural rest, till the debate he had within himself came to a firm
resolution, that the greatest advantages of a commonwealth are, first,
that the legislator should be one man; and, secondly, that the government
should be made all together, or at once. For the first, it is certain,
says Machiavel, that a commonwealth is seldom or never well turned or
constituted, except it has been the work of one man; for which cause a
wise legislator, and one whose mind is firmly set, not upon private but
the public interest, not upon his posterity but upon his country, may
justly endeavor to get the sovereign power into his own hands, nor shall
any man that is master of reason blame such extraordinary means as in that
case will be necessary, the end proving no other than the constitution of
a well-ordered commonwealth.

The reason of this is demonstrable; for the ordinary means not failing,
the commonwealth has no need of a legislator, but the ordinary means
failing, there is no recourse to be had but to such as are extraordinary.
And, whereas a book or a building has not been known to attain to its
perfection if it has not had a sole author or architect, a commonwealth,
as to the fabric of it, is of the like nature. And thus it may be made at
once; in which there be great advantages; for a commonwealth made at once,
takes security at the same time it lends money; and trusts not itself to
the faith of men, but launches immediately forth into the empire of laws,
and, being set straight, brings the manners of its citizens to its rule,
whence followed that uprightness which was in Lacedaemon. But manners that
are rooted in men, bow the tenderness of a commonwealth coming up by twigs
to their, bent, whence followed the obliquity that was in Rome, and those
perpetual repairs by the consuls' axes, and tribunes' hammers, which could
never finish that commonwealth but in destruction.

My lord general being clear in these points, and of the necessity of
some other course than would be thought upon by the Parliament, appointed
a meeting of the army, where he spoke his sense agreeable to these
preliminaries with such success to the soldiery, that the Parliament was
soon after deposed; had he himself, in the great hall of the Pantheon or
palace of justice, situated in Emporium, the capital city, was created by
the universal suffrage of the army, Lord Archon, or sole legislator of
Oceana, upon which theatre you have, to conclude this piece, a person
introduced, whose fame shall never draw its curtain.

The Lord Archon being created, fifty select persons to assist him, by
laboring in the mines of ancient prudence, and bringing its hidden
treasures to new light, were added, with the style also of legislators,
and sat as a council, whereof he was the sole director and president.

PART II

THE COUNCIL OF LEGISLATORS

OF this piece, being the
greater half of the whole work, I shall be able at this time to give no
further account, than very briefly to show at what it aims.

My Lord Archon, in opening the Council of legislators, made it appear
how unsafe a thing it is to follow fancy in the fabric of a commonwealth;
and how necessary that the archives of ancient prudence should be
ransacked before any councillor should presume to offer any other matter
in order to the work in hand, or toward the consideration to be had by the
Council upon a model of government. Wherefore he caused an urn to be
brought, and every one of the councillors to draw a lot. By the lots as
they were drawn,

The Commonwealth of Fell to

Israel...... Phosphorus de Auge

Athens..... Navarchus de Paralo

Lacedaemon..... Laco de Scytale

Carthage.. Mago de Syrtibus

The Achaeans, AEtolians, and Lycians....Aratus de Isthmo

The Switz Alpester de Fulmine

Holland and the United Provinces Glaucus de Ulna

Rome...... Dolabella de Enyo

Venice..... Lynceus de Stella

These contained in them all those excellencies whereof a commonwealth is
capable; so that to have added more had been to no purpose. Upon time
given to the councillors, by their own studies and those of their friends,
to prepare themselves, they were opened in the order, and by the persons
mentioned at the Council of legislators, and afterward by order of the
same were repeated at the council of the prytans to the people; for in
drawing of the lots, there were about a dozen of them inscribed with the
letter P, whereby the councillors that drew them became prytans.

The prytans were a committee or council sitting in the great hall of
Pantheon, to whom it was lawful for any man to offer anything in order to
the fabric of the commonwealth; for which cause, that they might not be
oppressed by the throng, there was a rail about the table where they sat,
and on each side of the same a pulpit; that on the right hand for any man
that would propose anything, and that on the left for any other that would
oppose him. And all parties (being indemnified by proclamation of the
Archon) were invited to dispute their own interests, or propose whatever
they thought fit (in order to the future government) to the council of the
prytans, who, having a guard of about two or three hundred men, lest the
heat of dispute might break the peace, had the right of moderators, and
were to report from time to time such propositions or occurrences as they
thought fit, to the Council of legislators sitting more privately in the
palace called Alma.

This was that which made the people (who were neither safely to be
admitted, nor conveniently to be excluded in the framing of the
commonwealth) verily believe, when it came forth, that it was no other
than that whereof they themselves had been the makers.

Moreover, this Council sat divers months after the publishing and during
the promulgation of the model to the people; by which means there is
scarce anything was said or written for or against the said model but you
shall have it with the next impression of this work, by way of oration
addressed to and moderated by the prytans.

By this means the Council of legislators had their necessary solitude
and due aim in their greater work, as being acquainted from time to time
with the pulse of the people, and yet without any manner of interruption
or disturbance.

Wherefore every commonwealth in its place having been opened by due
method -- that is, first, by the people; secondly, by the Senate; and,
thirdly, by the magistracy-the Council upon mature debate took such
results or orders out of each, and out of every part of each of them, as
upon opening the same they thought fit; which being put from time to time
in writing by the clerk or secretary, there remained no more in the
conclusion, than putting the orders so taken together, to view and examine
them with a diligent eye, that it might be clearly discovered whether they
did interfere, or could anywise come to interfere or jostle one with the
other. For as such orders jostling or coming to jostle one another are the
certain dissolution of the commonwealth, so, taken upon the proof of like
experience, and neither jostling nor showing which way they can possibly
come to jostle one another, they make a perfect and (for aught that in
human prudence can be foreseen) an immortal commonwealth.

And such was the art whereby my Lord Archon (taking council of the
Commonwealth of Israel, as of Moses; and of the rest of the commonwealths,
as of Jethro) framed the model of the Commonwealth of Oceana.

PART III

THE MODEL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA

WHEREAS my Lord Archon,
being from Moses and Lycurgus the first legislator that hitherto is found
in history to have introduced or erected an entire commonwealth at once,
happened, like them also, to be more intent upon putting the same into
execution or action, than into writing; by which means the model came to
be promulgated or published with more brevity and less illustration than
are necessary for their understanding who have not been acquainted with
the whole proceedings of the Council of legislators, and of the prytans,
where it was asserted and cleared from all objections and doubts: to the
end that I may supply what was wanting in the promulgated epitome to a
more full and perfect narrative of the whole, I shall rather take the
commonwealth practically; and as it has now given an account of itself in
some years' revolutions (as Dicearchus is said to have done that of
Lacedaemon, first transcribed by his hand some three or four hundred years
after the institution), yet not omitting to add for proof to every order
such debates and speeches of the legislators in their Council, or at least
such parts of them as may best discover the reason of the government; nor
such ways and means as were used in the institution or rise of the
building, not to be so well conceived, without some knowledge given of the
engines wherewithal the mighty weight was moved. But through the entire
omission of the Council of legislators or workmen that squared every stone
to this structure in the quarries of ancient prudence, the proof of the
first part of this discourse will be lame, except I insert, as well for
illustration as to avoid frequent repetition, three remarkable testimonies
in this place.

The first is taken out of the Commonwealth of Israel: "So Moses
hearkened to the voice of Jethro, his father-in-law, and did all that he
had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads
over the people;" tribunes, as it is in the vulgar Latin; or
phylarchs, that is, princes of the tribes, sitting upon twelve thrones,
and judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and next to these he chose rulers
of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens,
which were the steps and rise of this commonwealth from its foundation or
root to its proper elevation or accomplishment in the Sanhedrim, and the
congregation, already opened in the preliminaries.

The second is taken out of Lacedaemon, as Lycurgus (for the greater
impression of his institutions upon the minds of his citizens) pretended
to have received the model of that commonwealth from the oracle of Apollo
at Delphos, the words whereof are thus recorded by Plutarch in the life of
that famous legislator: "When thou shalt have divided the people into
tribes (which were six) and oboe (which were five in every tribe), thou
shalt constitute the Senate, consisting, with the two Kings, of thirty
councillors, who, according as occasion requires, shall cause the
congregation to be assembled between the bridge and the river Gnacion,
where the Senate shall propose to the people, and dismiss them without
suffering them to debate." The oboe were lineages into which every
tribe was divided, and in each tribe there was another division containing
all those of the same that were of military age, which being called the
mora, was subdivided into troops and companies that were kept in perpetual
discipline under the command of a magistrate called the polemarch.

The third is taken out of the Commonwealth of Rome, or those parts of it
which are comprised in the first and second books of Livy, where the
people, according to the institution by Romulus, are first divided into
thirty curias or parishes, whereof he elected, by three out of each curia,
the Senate, which, from his reign to that or Servius Tullius, proposed to
the parishes or parochial congregations; and these being called the
Comitia curiata, had the election of the kings, the confirmation of their
laws, and the last appeal in matters of judicature, as appears in the case
of Horatius that killed his sister; till, in the reign of Servius (for the
other kings kept not to the institution of Romulus), the people being
grown somewhat, the power of the Curiata was for the greater part
translated to the Centuriata comitia instituted by this King, which
distributed the people, according to the sense of valuation of their
estates, into six classes, every one containing about forty centuries,
divided into youth and elders; the youth for field-service, the elders for
the defence of their territory, all armed and under continual discipline,
in which they assembled both upon military and civil occasions. But when
the Senate proposed to the people, the horse only, whereof there were
twelve centuries, consisting of the richest sort over and above those of
the foot enumerated, were called with the first classes of the foot to the
suffrage; or if these accorded not, then the second classes were called to
them, but seldom or never any of the rest. Wherefore the people, after the
expulsion of the kings, growing impatient of this inequality, rested not
till they had reduced the suffrage as it had been in the Comitia curiato
to the whole people again; but in another way, that is to say, by the
Comitia tributa, which thereupon were instituted, being a council where
the people in exigencies made laws without the Senate, which laws were
called plebiscita. This Council is that in regard whereof Cicero and other
great wits so frequently inveigh against the people, and sometimes even
Livy as at the first institution of it. To say the truth, it was a kind of
anarchy, whereof the people could not be excusable, if there had not,
through the courses taken by the Senate, been otherwise a necessity that
they must have seen the commonwealth run into oligarchy.

The manner how the Comitia curiata, centuriata or tributa were called,
during the time of the commonwealth, to the suffrage, was by lot: the
curia, century, or tribe, whereon the first lot fell, being styled
principium, or the prerogative; and the other curioe, centuries or tribes,
whereon the second, third, and fourth lots, etc., fell, the jure vocatoe.
From henceforth not the first classes, as in the times of Servius, but the
prerogative, whether curia, century, or tribe, came first to the suffrage,
whose vote was called omen proerogativum, and seldom failed to be leading
to the rest of the tribes. The jure vocatoe, in the order of their lots,
came next: the manner of giving suffrage was, by casting wooden tablets,
marked for the affirmative or the negative, into certain urns standing
upon a scaffold, as they marched over it in files, which for the
resemblance it bore was called the bridge. The candidate, or competitor,
who had most suffrages in a curia, century, or tribe, was said to have
that curia, century, or tribe; and he who had most of the curioe,
centuries, or tribes, carried the magistracy.

These three places being premised, as such upon which there will be
frequent reflection, I come to the narrative, divided into two parts, the
first containing the institution, the second the constitution of the
commonwealth, in each whereof I shall distinguish the orders, as those
which contain the whole model, from the rest of the discourse, which tends
only to the explanation or proof of them.

In the institution or building of a commonwealth, the first work, as
that of builders, can be no other than fitting and distributing the
materials.

The materials of a commonwealth are the people, and the people of Oceana
were distributed by casting them into certain divisions, regarding their
quality, their age, their wealth, and the places of their residence or
habitation, which was done by the ensuing orders.

The first order "distributes the people into freemen or citizens
and servants, while such; for if they attain to liberty, that is, to live
of themselves, they are freemen or citizens."

This order needs no proof, in regard of the nature of servitude, which
is inconsistent with freedom, or participation of government in a
commonwealth.

The second order "distributes citizens into youth and elders (such
as are from eighteen years of age to thirty, being accounted youth; and
such as are of thirty and upward, elders), and establishes that the youth
shall be the marching armies, and the elders the standing garrisons of
this nation."

A commonwealth, whose arms are in the hands of her servants, had need be
situated, as is elegantly said of Venice by Contarini, out of the reach of
their clutches; witness the danger run by that of Carthage in the
rebellion of Spendius and Matho. But though a city, if one swallow makes a
summer, may thus chance to be safe, yet shall it never be great; for if
Carthage or Venice acquired any fame in their arms, it is known to have
happened through the mere virtue of their captains, and not of their
orders; wherefore Israel, Lacedaemon, and Rome entailed their arms upon
the prime of their citizens, divided, at least in Lacedaemon and Rome,
into youth and elders: the youth for the field, and the elders for defence
of the territory.

The third order "distributes the citizens into horse and foot, by
the sense or valuation of their estates; they who have above £100 a
year in lands, goods, or moneys, being obliged to be of the horse, and
they who have under that sum to be of the foot. But if a man has
prodigally wasted and spent his patrimony, he is neither capable of
magistracy, office, or suffrage in the commonwealth."

Citizens are not only to defend the commonwealth, but according to their
abilities, as the Romans under Servius Tullius (regard had to their
estates), were some enrolled in the horse centuries, and others of the
foot, with arms enjoined accordingly, nor could it be otherwise in the
rest of the commonwealths, though out of historical remains, that are so
much darker, it be not so clearly probable. And the necessary prerogative
to be given by a commonwealth to estates, is in some measure in the nature
of industry, and the use of it to the public. "The Roman people,"
says Julius Exuperantius, "were divided into classes, and taxed
according to the value of their estates. All that were worth the sums
appointed were employed in the wars; for they most eagerly contend for the
victory; who fight for liberty in defence of their country and
possessions. But the poorer sort were polled only for their heads (which
was all they had) and kept in garrison at home in time of war; for these
might betray the armies for bread, by reason of their poverty, which is
the reason that Marius, to whom the care of the government ought not to
have been committed, was the first that led them into the field;" and
his success was accordingly. There is a mean in things; as exorbitant
riches overthrow the balance of a commonwealth, so extreme poverty cannot
hold it, nor is by any means to be trusted with it. The clause in the
order concerning the prodigal is Athenian, and a very laudable one; for he
that could not live upon his patrimony, if he comes to touch the public
money, makes a commonwealth bankrupt.

The fourth order "distributes the people according to the places of
their habitation, into parishes, hundreds, and tribes."

For except the people be methodically distributed, they cannot be
methodically collected; but the being of a commonwealth consists in the
methodical collection of the people: wherefore you have the Israelitish
divisions into rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens;
and of the whole commonwealth into tribes: the Laconic into oboe, moras,
and tribes; the Roman into tribes, centuries, and classes; and something
there must of necessity be in every government of the like nature, as that
in the late monarchy -- by counties. But this being the only institution
in Oceana, except that of the agrarian, which required any charge or
included any difficulty, engages me to a more particular description of
the manner how it was performed, as follows:

A thousand surveyors, commissioned and instructed by the Lord Archon and
the Council, being divided into two equal numbers, each under the
inspection of two surveyors-general, were distributed into the northern
and southern parts of the territory, divided by the river Hemisua, the
whole whereof contains about 10,000 parishes, some ten of those being
assigned to each surveyor; for as to this matter there needed no great
exactness, it tending only by showing whither everyone was to, begin, to
the more orderly carrying repair and whereabout to on of the work; the
nature of their instructions otherwise regarding rather the number of the
inhabitants than of the parishes. The surveyors, therefore, being every
one furnished with a convenient proportion of urns, balls, and
balloting-boxes -- in the use whereof they had been formerly exercised --
and now arriving each at his respective parish, being with the people by
teaching them their first lesson, which was the ballot; and though they
found them in the beginning somewhat froward, as at toys, with which,
while they were in expectation of greater matters from a Council of
legislators, they conceived themselves to be abused, they came within a
little while to think them pretty sport, and at length such as might very
soberly be used in good earnest; whereupon the surveyors began the
institution included in --

The first order, requiring "That upon the first Monday next ensuing
the last of December the bigger bell in every parish throughout the nation
be rung at eight of the clock in the morning, and continue ringing for the
space of one hour; and that all the elders of the parish respectively
repair to the church before the bell has done ringing, where, dividing
themselves into two equal numbers, or as near equal as may be, they shall
take their places according to their dignities, if they be of divers
qualities, and according to their seniority, if they be of the same, the
one half on the one side, and the other half on the other, in the body of
the church, which done, they shall make oath to the overseers of the
parish for the time being (instead of these the surveyors were to
officiate at the institution, or first assembly) by holding up their
hands, to make a fair election according to the laws of the ballot, as
they are hereafter explained, of such persons, amounting to a fifth part
of their whole number, to be their deputies, and to exercise their power
in manner hereafter explained, as they shall think in their consciences to
be fittest for that trust, and will acquit themselves of it to the best
advantage of the commonwealth. And oath being thus made, they shall
proceed to election, if the elders of the parish amount to 1,000 by the
ballot of the tribe, as it is in due place explained, and if the elders of
the parish amount to fifty or upward, but within the number of 1,000, by
the ballot of the hundred, as it is in due place explained. But, if the
elders amount not to fifty, then they shall proceed to the ballot of the
parish, as it is in this place and after this manner explained.

"The two overseers for the time being shall seat themselves at the
upper end of the middle alley, with a table before them, their faces being
toward the congregation, and the constable for the time being shall set an
urn before the table, into which he shall put so many balls as there be
elders present, whereof there shall be one that is gilded, the rest being
white; and when the constable has shaken the urn, sufficiently to mix the
balls, the overseers shall call the elders to the urn, who from each side
of the church shall come up the middle alley in two files, every man
passing by the urn, and drawing out one ball; which, if it be silver, he
shall cast into a bowl standing at the foot of the urn, and return by the
outward alley on his side to his place. But he who draws the golden ball
is the proposer, and shall be seated between the overseers, where he shall
begin in what order he pleases, and name such as, upon his oath already
taken, he conceives fittest to be chosen, one by one, to the elders; and
the party named shall withdraw while the congregation is balloting his
name by the double box or boxes appointed and marked on the outward part,
to show which side is affirmative and which negative, being carried by a
boy or boys appointed by the overseers, to every one of the elders, who
shall hold up a pellet made of linen rags between his finger and his
thumb, and put it after such a manner into the box, as though no man can
see into which side he puts it, yet any man may see that he puts in but
one pellet or suffrage. And the suffrage of the congregation being thus,
given, shall be returned with the box or boxes to the overseers, who
opening the same, shall pour the affirmative balls into a white bowl
standing upon the table on the right hand, to be numbered by the first
overseer; and the negative into a green bowl standing on the left hand, to
be numbered by the second overseer; and the suffrages being numbered, he
who has the major part in the affirmative is one of the deputies of the
parish, and when so many deputies are chosen as amount to a full fifth
part of the whole number of the elders, the ballot for that time shall
cease. The deputies being chosen are to be listed by the overseers in
order as they were chosen, except only that such as are horse must be
listed in the first place with the rest, proportionable to the number of
the congregation, after this manner.

Anno Domini

THE LIST OF THE FIRST MOVER

A.A. Equestrian Order, First Deputy B.B. Second Deputy,

C.C. Third Deputy,

D.D. Fourth Deputy,

E.E. Fifty Deputy,

Of the parish of ______ in the hundred of _______ and the tribe of
______, which parish at the present election contains twenty elders,
whereof one is of the horse or equestrian order.

"The first and second in the list are overseers by
consequence; the third is the constable, and the fourth and fifth are
churchwardens; the persons so chosen are deputies of the parish for the
space of one year from their election, and no longer, nor may they be
elected two years together. This list, being the primum mobile, or first
mover of the commonwealth, is to be registered in a book diligently kept
and preserved by the overseers, who are responsible in their places, for
these and other duties to be hereafter mentioned, to the censors of the
tribe; and the congregation is to observe the present order, as they will
answer the contrary to the phylarch, or prerogative troop of the tribe,
which, in case of failure in the whole or any part of it, have power to
fine them or any of them at discretion, but under an appeal to the
Parliament."

For proof of this order, first, in reason, it is with all politicians
past dispute that paternal power is in the right of nature; and this is no
other than the derivation of power from fathers of families as the natural
root of a commonwealth. And for experience, if it be otherwise in that of
Holland, I know no other example of the like kind. in Israel, the
sovereign power came clearly from the natural root, the elders of the
whole people; and Rome was born, Comitiis curiatis, in her parochial
congregations, out of which Romulus first raised her Senate, then all the
rest of the orders of that commonwealth, which rose so high: for the depth
of a commonwealth is the just height of it-

"She raises up her head unto the skies,

Near as her root unto the centre lies."

And if the Commonwealth of Rome was born of thirty parishes, this of
Oceana was born of 10,000. But whereas mention in the birth of this is
made of an equestrian order, it may startle such as know that the division
of the people of Rome, at the institution of that commonwealth into
orders, was the occasion of its ruin. The distinction of the patrician as
a hereditary order from the very institution, engrossing all the
magistracies, was indeed the destruction of Rome; but to a knight or one
of the equestrian order, says Horace,

"Si quadringentis sex septem millia desunt,

Plebs eris."

By which it should seem that this order was not otherwise hereditary
than a man's estate, nor did it give any claim to magistracy; wherefore
you shall never find that it disquieted the commonwealth, nor does the
name denote any more in Oceana than the duty of such a man's estate to the
public.

But the surveyors, both in this place and in others, forasmuch as they
could not observe all the circumstances of this order, especially that of
the time of election, did for the first as well as they could; and, the
elections being made and registered, took each of them copies of those
lists which were within their allotments, which done they produced --

The sixth order, directing "in case a parson or vicar of a parish
comes to be removed by death or by the censors, that the congregation of
the parish assemble and depute one or two elders by the ballot, who upon
the charge of the parish shall repair to one of the universities of this
nation with a certificate signed by the overseers, and addressed to the
vice-chancellor, which certificate, giving notice of the death or removal
of the parson or vicar, of the value of the parsonage or vicarage, and of
the desire of the congregation to receive a probationer from that
university, the vice-chancellor, upon the receipt thereof, shall call a
convocation, and having made choice of a fit person, shall return him in
due time to the parish, where the person so returned shall return the full
fruits of the benefice or vicarage, and do the duty of the parson or
vicar, for the space of one year, as probationer; and that being expired,
the congregation of the elders shall put their probationer to the ballot,
and if he attains not to two parts in three of the suffrage affirmative,
he shall take his leave of the parish, and they shall send in like manner
as before for another probationer; but if their probationer obtains two
parts in three of the suffrage affirmative, he is then pastor of that
parish. And the pastor of the parish shall pray with the congregation,
preach the Word, and administer the sacraments to the same, according to
the directory to be hereafter appointed by the Parliament. Nevertheless
such as are of gathered congregations, or from time to time shall join
with any of them, are in no wise obliged to this way of electing their
teachers, or to give their votes in this case, but wholly left to the
liberty of their own consciences, and to that way of worship which they
shall choose, being not popish, Jewish, or idolatrous. And to the end they
may be the better protected by the State in the exercise of the same, they
are desired to make choice, and such manner as they best like, of certain
magistrates in every one of their congregations, which we could wish might
be four in each of them, to be auditors in cases of differences or
distaste, if any through variety of opinions, that may be grievous or
injurious to them, shall fall out. And such auditors or magistrates shall
have power to examine the matter, and inform themselves, to the end that
if they think it of sufficient weight, they may acquaint the phylarch with
it, or introduce it into the Council of Religion; where all such causes as
those magistrates introduce shall from time to time be heard and
determined according to such laws as are or shall hereafter be provided by
the Parliament for the just defence of the liberty of conscience."

This order consists of three parts, the first restoring the power of
ordination to the people, which, that it originally belongs to them, is
clear, though not in English yet in Scripture, where the apostles ordained
elders by the holding up of hands in every congregation, that is, by the
suffrage of the people, which was also given in some of those cities by
the ballot. And though it may be shown that the apostles ordained some by
the laying on of hands, it will not be shown that they did so in every
congregation.

Excommunication, as not clearly provable out of the Scripture, being
omitted, the second part of the order implies and establishes a national
religion; for there be degrees of knowledge in divine things; true
religion is not to be learned without searching the Scripture; the
Scriptures cannot be searched by us unless we have them to search; and if
we have nothing else, or (which is all one) understand nothing else but a
translation, we may be (as in the place alleged we have been) beguiled or
misled by the translation, while we should be searching the true sense of
the Scripture, which cannot be attained in a natural way (and a
commonwealth is not to presume upon that which is supernatural) but by the
knowledge of the original and of antiquity, acquired by our own studies,
or those of some others, for even faith comes by hearing. Wherefore a
commonwealth not making provision of men from time to time, knowing in the
original languages wherein the Scriptures were written, and versed in
those antiquities to which they so frequently relate, that the true sense
of them depends in great part upon that knowledge, can never be secure
that she shall not lose the Scripture, and by consequence her religion;
which to preserve she must institute some method of this knowledge, and
some use of such as have acquired it, which amounts to a national
religion.

The commonwealth having thus performed her duty toward God, as a
rational creature, by the best application of her reason to Scripture, and
for the preservation of religion in the purity of the same, yet pretends
not to infallibility, but comes in the third part of the order,
establishing liberty of conscience according to the instructions given to
her Council of Religion, to raise up her hands to heaven for further
light; in which proceeding she follows that (as was shown in the
preliminaries) of Israel, who, though her national religion was always a
part of her civil law, gave to her prophets the upper hand of all her
orders.

But the surveyors. having now done with the parishes, took their leave;
so a parish is the first division of land occasioned by the first
collection of the people of Oceana, whose function proper to that place is
comprised in the six preceding orders.

The next step in the progress of the surveyors was to a meeting of the
nearest of them, as their work lay, by twenties; where conferring their
lists, and computing the deputies contained therein, as the number of them
in parishes, being nearest neighbors, amounted to 100, or as even as might
conveniently be brought with that account, they cast them and those
parishes into the precinct which (be the deputies ever since more or
fewer) is still called the hundred; and to every one of these precincts
they appointed a certain place, being the most convenient town within the
same, for the annual rendezvous; which done, each surveyor, returning to
his hundred, and summoning the deputies contained in his lists to the
rendezvous, they appeared and received --

The seventh order, requiring, "That upon the first Monday next
ensuing the last of January, the deputies of every parish annually
assemble in arms at the rendezvous of the hundred, and there elect out of
their number one justice of the peace, one juryman, one captain, one
ensign of their troop or century, each of these out of the horse; and one
juryman, one coroner, one high constable, out of the foot. The election to
be made by the ballot in this manner. The jurymen for the time being are
to be overseers of the ballot (instead of these, the surveyors are to
officiate at the first assembly), and to look to the performance of the
same according to what was directed in the ballot of the parishes, saving
that the high constable setting forth the urn shall have five several
suits of gold balls, and one dozen of every suit; whereof the first shall
be marked with the letter A, the second with the letter B, the third with
C, the fourth with D, and the fifth with E: and of each of these suits he
shall cast one ball into his hat, or into a little urn, and shaking the
balls together, present them to the first overseer, who shall draw one,
and the suit which is so drawn by the overseer shall be of use for that
day, and no other; for example, if the overseer drew an A, the high
constable shall put seven gold balls marked with the letter A into the
urn, with so many silver ones as shall bring them even with the number of
the deputies, who being sworn, as before, at the ballot of the parish to
make a fair election, shall be called to the urn; and every man coming in
manner as was there shown, shall draw one ball, which, if it be silver, he
shall cast it into a bowl standing at the foot of the urn, and return to
his place: but the first that draws a gold ball (showing it to the
overseers, who if it has not the letter of the present ballot, have power
to apprehend and punish him) is the first elector, the second the second
elector, and so to the seventh; which order they are to observe in their
function.

"The electors as they are drawn shall be placed upon the bench by
the overseers, till the whole number be complete, and then be conducted,
with the list of the officers to be chosen, into a place apart, where,
being private, the first elector shall name a person to the first office
in the list; and if the person so named, being balloted by the rest of the
electors, attains not to the better half of the suffrages in the
affirmative, the first elector shall continue nominating others, till one
of them so nominated by him attains to the plurality of the suffrages in
the affirmative, and be written first competitor to the first office. This
done, the second elector shall observe in his turn the like order; and so
the rest of the electors, naming competitors each to his respective office
in the list, till one competitor be chosen to every office: and when one
competitor is chosen to every office, the first elector shall begin again
to name a second competitor to the first office, and the rest successively
shall name to the rest of the offices till two competitors be chosen to
every office; the like shall be repeated till three competitors be chosen
to every office. And when three competitors are chosen to every office,
the list shall be returned to the overseers, or such as the overseers, in
case they or either of them happened to be electors, have substituted in
his or their place or places; and the overseers or substitutes having
caused the list to be read to the congregation, shall put the competitors,
in order as they are written, to the ballot of the congregation; and the
rest of the proceedings being carried on in the manner directed in the
fifth order, that competitor, of the three written to each office, who has
most of the suffrages above half in the affirmative, is the officer. The
list being after this manner completed, shall be entered into a register,
to be kept at the rendezvous of the hundred, under inspection of the
magistrates of the same, after the manner following:

Of the hundred of ______ in the tribe of _______, which hundred consists
at this election of 105 deputies.

"The list being entered, the high constable shall take three copies
of the same, whereof he shall presently return one to the lord high
sheriff of the tribe, a second to the lord custos rotulorum, and a third
to the censors; or these, through the want of such magistrates at the
first muster, may be returned to the orator, to be appointed for that
tribe. To the observation of all and every part of this order, the
officers and deputies of the hundred are all and every of them obliged, as
they will answer it to the phylarch, who has power, in case of failure in
the whole or any part, to fine all or any of them so failing at
discretion, or according to such laws as shall hereafter be provided in
that case, but under an appeal to the Parliament." There is little in
this order worthy of any further account, but that it answers to the
rulers of hundreds in Israel, to the mora or military part of the tribe in
Lacedaemon, and to the century in Rome. The jurymen, being two in a
hundred, and so forty in a tribe, give the latitude allowed by the law for
exceptions. And whereas the golden balls at this ballot begin to be marked
with letters, whereof one is to be drawn immediately before it begins,
this is to the end that the letter being unknown, men may be frustrated of
tricks or foul play, whereas otherwise a man may bring a golden ball with
him, and make as if he had drawn it out of the urn. The surveyors, when
they had taken copies of these lists, had accomplished their work in the
hundreds.

So a hundred is the second division of land occasioned by the second
collection of the people, whose civil and military functions proper to
this place are comprised in the foregoing order.

Having stated the hundreds, they met once again by twenties, where there
was nothing more easy than to cast every twenty hundreds, as they lay most
conveniently together, into one tribe; so the whole territory of Oceana,
consisting of about 10,000 parishes, came to be cast into 1,000 hundreds,
and into fifty tribes. In every tribe at the place appointed for the
annual rendezvous of the same, were then, or soon after begun those
buildings which are now called pavilions; each of them standing with one
open side upon fair columns, like the porch of some ancient temple, and
looking into a field capable of the muster of some 4,000 men; before each
pavilion stand three pillars sustaining urns for the ballot, that on the
right hand equal in height to the brow of a horseman, being called the
horse urn, that on the left hand, with bridges on either side to bring it
equal in height with the brow of a footman, being called the foot urn, and
the middle urn, with a bridge on the side toward the foot urn, the other
side, as left for the horse, being without one; and here ended the whole
work of the surveyors, who returned to the Lord Archon with this --

ACCOUNT OF THE CHARGE

Imprimis: Urns, balls, and balloting-boxes for 10,000 parishes,

the same being wooden-ware, £20,000

Item: Provision of the like kind for a thousand hundreds

3,000

Item: Urns and balls of metal, with balloting-boxes for fifty tribes,

2,000

Item: For erecting of fifty pavilions,

60,000

Item: Wages for four surveyors-general at £1,000 a man

4,000

Item: Wages for the rest of the surveyors, being 1,000 at £250 a
man

250,000

Sum Total £339,000

This is no great matter of charge for the building of a commonwealth, in
regard that it has cost (which was pleaded by the surveyors) as much to
rig a few ships. Nevertheless that proves not them to be honest, nor their
account to be just; but they had their money for once, though their
reckoning be plainly guilty of a crime, to cost him his neck that commits
it another time, it being impossible for a commonwealth (without an exact
provision that it be not abused in this kind) to subsist; for if no regard
should be had of the charge (though that may go deep), yet the debauchery
and corruption whereto, by negligence in accounts, it infallibly exposes
its citizens, and thereby lessens the public faith, which is the nerve and
ligament of government, ought to be prevented. But the surveyors being
despatched, the Lord Archon was very curious in giving names to his
tribes, which having caused to be written in scrolls cast into an urn, and
presented to the councillors, each of them drew one, and was accordingly
sent to the tribe in his lot, as orators of the same, a magistracy no
otherwise instituted, than for once and pro tempore, to the end that the
council upon so great an occasion might both congratulate with the tribes,
and assist at the first muster in some things of necessity to be
differently carried from the established administration and future course
of the commonwealth.

The orators being arrived, every one as soon as might be, at the
rendezvous of his tribe, gave notice to the hundreds, and summoned the
muster which appeared for the most part upon good horses, and already
indifferently well armed; as to instance in one for all, the tribe of
Nubia, where Hermes de Caduceo, lord orator of the same, after a short
salutation and a hearty welcome, applied himself to his business, which
began with --

The eighth order requiring "That the lord high sheriff as
commander-in-chief, and the lord custos rotulorum as muster-master of the
tribe (or the orator for the first muster), upon reception of the lists of
their hundreds, returned to them by the high constables of the same,
presently cause them to be cast up, dividing the horse from the foot, and
listing the horse by their names in troops, each troop containing about
100 in number, to be inscribed First, Second, or Third troop, etc.,
according to the order agreed upon by the said magistrates; which done,
they shall list the foot in like manner, and inscribe the companies in
like order. These lists upon the eve of the muster shall be delivered to
certain trumpeters and drummers, whereof there shall be fifteen of each
sort (as well for the present as otherwise to be hereafter mentioned)
stipendiated by the tribe. And the trumpeters and drummers shall be in the
field before the pavilion, upon the day of the muster, so soon as it is
light, where they shall stand every one with his list in his hand, at a
due distance, placed according to the order of the list, the trumpeters
with the lists of the horse on the right hand, and the drummers with the
lists of the foot on the left hand; where having sounded awhile, each of
them shall begin to call and continue calling the names of the deputies,
as they come into the field, till both the horse and foot be gathered by
that means into their due order. The horse and foot being in order, the
lord lieutenant of the tribe shall cast so many gold balls marked with the
figures 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., as there be troops of horse in the field,
together with so many silver balls as there be companies, marked in the
same manner, into a little urn, to which he shall call the captains; and
the captains drawing the gold balls shall command the horse, and those
that draw the silver the foot, each in the order of his lot. The like
shall be done by the conductor at the same time for the ensigns at another
urn; and they that draw the gold balls shall be cornets, the left ensigns."

This order may puzzle the reader, but tends to a wonderful speed of the
muster, to which it would be a great matter to lose a day in ranging and
marshalling, whereas by virtue of this the tribe is no sooner in the field
than in battalia, nor sooner in battalia than called to the urns or the
ballot by virtue of --

The ninth order, "Whereby the censors (or the orator for the first
muster) upon reception of the lists of the hundreds from the high
constables, according as is directed by the seventh order are to make
their notes for the urns beforehand, with regard had to the lists of the
magistrates, to be elected by the ensuing orders, that is to say, by the
first list called the prime magnitude, six; and by the second called the
galaxy, nine. Wherefore the censors are to put into the middle urn for the
election of the first list twenty-four gold balls, with twenty-six blanks
or silver balls, in all sixty; and into the side urns sixty gold balls,
divided into each according to the different number of the horse and foot;
that is to say, if the horse and the foot be equal, equally, and if the
horse and the foot be unequal, unequally, by an arithmetical proportion.
The like shall be done the second day of the muster for the second list,
except that the censors shall put into the middle urn thirty-six gold
balls with twenty-four blanks, in all sixty; and sixty gold balls into the
side urns, divided respectively into the number of the horse and the foot;
and the gold balls in the side urns at either ballot are by the addition
of blanks to be brought even with the number of the ballotants at either
urn respectively. The censors having prepared their notes, as has been
shown, and being come at the day appointed into the field, shall present a
little urn to the lord high sheriff, who is to draw twice for the letters
to be used that day, the one at the side urns, and the other at the
middle. And the censors having fitted the urns accordingly, shall place
themselves in certain movable seats or pulpits (to be kept for that use in
the pavilion) the first censor before the horse urn, the second before the
foot urn, the lord lieutenant doing the office of censor pro tempore at
the middle urn; where all and every one of them shall cause the laws of
the ballot to be diligently observed, taking a special care that no man be
suffered to come above once to the urn (whereof it more particularly
concerns the sub-censors, that is to say, the overseers of every parish,
to be careful, they being each in this regard responsible for their
respective parishes) or to draw above one ball, which if it be gold, he is
to present to the censor, who shall look upon the letter; and if it be not
that of the day, and of the respective urn, apprehend the party, who for
this or any other like disorder is obnoxious to the phylarch."

This order being observed by the censors, it is not possible for the
people, if they can but draw the balls, though they understand nothing at
all of the ballot, to be out. To philosophize further upon this art,
though there be nothing more rational, were not worth the while, because
in writing it will be perplexed, and the first practice of it gives the
demonstration; whence it came to pass that the orator, after some needless
pains in the explanation of the two foregoing orders, betaking himself to
exemplify the same, found the work done to his hand, for the tribe, as
eager upon a business of this nature, had retained one of the surveyors,
out of whom (before the orator arrived) they had got the whole mystery by
a stolen muster, at which in order to the ballot they had made certain
magistrates pro tempore. Wherefore he found not only the pavilion (for
this time a tent) erected with three posts, supplying the place of pillars
to the urns, but the urns being prepared with a just number of balls for
the first ballot, to become the field, and the occasion very gallantly
with their covers made in the manner of helmets, open at either ear to
give passage to the hands of the ballotants, and slanting with noble
plumes to direct the march of the people.

Wherefore he proceeded to --

The tenth order, "Requiring of the deputies of the parishes, that
upon every Monday next ensuing the last of February, they make their
personal appearance, horse and foot in arms accordingly, at the rendezvous
of the tribe, where, being in discipline, the horse upon the right, and
the foot upon the left, before the pavilion, and having made oath by
holding up their hands, upon the tender of it by the lord high sheriff, to
make election without favor, and of such only as they shall judge fittest
for the commonwealth, the conductor shill take three balls, the one
inscribed with these words (outward files), another with these words
(inward files), and the third with these (middle files), which balls he
shall cast into a little urn, and present it to the lord high sheriff,
who, drawing one, shall give the words of command, as they are thereupon
inscribed, and the ballot shall begin accordingly. For example, if the
ball be inscribed 'Middle files,' the ballot shall begin by the middle;
that is, the two files that are middle to the horse shall draw out first
to the horse urn, and the two files that are middle to the foot shall draw
out first to the foot urn, and be followed by all the rest of the files as
they are next to them in order. The like shall be done by the inward, or
by the outward files in case they be first called. And the files, as every
man has drawn his ball, if it be silver, shall behind at the urn to
countermarch to their places, but he that has drawn a gold ball at a side
urn shall proceed to the middle urn, where if the balls he draws be silver
he shall also countermarch, but if it be gold he shall take his place upon
a form set across the pavilion, with his face toward the lord high
sheriff, who shall be seated in the middle of the pavilion, with certain
clerks by him, one of which shall write down the names of every elector,
that is, of every one that drew a gold ball at the middle urn, and in the
order his ball was drawn, till the electors amount to six in number. And
the first six electors, horse and foot promiscuously, are the first order
of electors; the second six (still accounting them as they are drawn) the
second order, the third six the third order, and the fourth six the fourth
order of electors; every elector having place in his order, according to
the order wherein he was drawn. But so soon as the first order of electors
is complete, the lord high sheriff shall send them with a copy of the
following list, and a clerk that understands the ballot, immediately to a
little tent standing before the pavilion in his eye, to which no other
person but themselves, during the election, shall approach. The list shall
be written in this manner:

Anno Domini

THE LIST OF THE PRIME MAGNITUDE, OR FIRST DAY'S ELECTION OF MAGISTRATES

The Lord High Sheriff, Commander-in-Chief,

Lord Lieutenant,

Lord Custos Rotulorum, Muster-Master-General,

The Conductor, being Quarter-master General,

The First Censor,

The Second Censor,

Of the tribe of Nubia, containing at the present muster 700 horse and
1,500 foot, in all 22,000 deputies.

"And the electors of the first band or order, being six,
shall each of them name to his respective magistracy in the left such as
are not already elected in the hundreds, till one competitor be chosen to
every magistracy in the list by the ballot of the electors of the first
order, which done, the list with the competitors thereunto annexed shall
be returned to the lord high sheriff by the clerk attending that order,
but the electors shall keep their places; for they have already given
their suffrage, and may not enter into the ballot of the tribe. If there
arises any dispute in an order of electors, one of the censors or
sub-censors appointed by them in case they be electors, shall enter into
the tent of that order, and that order shall stand to his judgment in the
decision of the controversy. The like shall be done exactly by each other
order of electors, being sent as they are drawn, each with another copy of
the same list, into a distinct tent, till there be returned to the lord
high sheriff four competitors to every magistracy in the list; that is to
say, one competitor elected to every office in every one of the four
orders, which competitors the lord high sheriff shall cause to be
pronounced or read by a crier to the congregation, and the congregation
having heard the whole lists repeated, the names shall be put by the lord
high sheriff to the tribe, one by one, beginning with the first competitor
in the first order, thence proceeding to the first competitor in the
second order, and so to the first in the third and fourth orders. And the
suffrages being taken in boxes by boys (as has been already shown) shall
be poured into the bowls standing before the censors, who shall be seated
at each end of the table in the pavilion, the one numbering the
affirmatives and the other the negatives, and he of the four competitors
to the first magistracy that has most above half the suffrages of the
tribe in the affirmative, is the first magistrate. The like is to be done
successively by the rest of the competitors in their order. But because
soon after the boxes are sent out for the first name, there be others sent
out for the second, and so for the third, etc., by which means divers
names are successively at one and the same time in balloting; the boy that
carries a box shall sing or repeat continually the name of the competitor
for whom that box is carrying, with that also of the magistracy to which
he is proposed. A magistrate of the tribe happening to be an elector, may
substitute any one of his own order to execute his other function. The
magistrates of the prime magnitude being thus elected, shall receive the
present charge of the tribe."

If it be objected against this order that the magistrates to be elected
by it will be men of more inferior rank than those of the hundreds, in
regard that those are chosen first, it may be remembered that so were the
burgesses in the former government, nevertheless the knights of the shire
were men of greater quality; and the election at the hundred is made by a
council of electors, of whom less cannot be expected than the discretion
of naming persons fittest for those capacities, with an eye upon these to
be elected at the tribe. As for what may be objected in point of
difficulty, it is demonstrable by the foregoing orders, that a man might
bring 10,000 men, if there were occasion, with as much ease, and as
suddenly to perform the ballot, as he can make 5,000 men, drawing them out
by double files, to march a quarter of a mile. But because at this ballot,
to go up and down the field, distributing the linen pellets to every man,
with which he is to ballot or give suffrage, would lose a great deal of
time, therefore a man's wife, his daughters, or others, make him his
provision of pellets before the ballot, and he comes into the field with a
matter of a score of them in his pocket. And now I have as good as done
with the sport. The next is --

The eleventh order, "Explaining the duties and functions of the
magistrates contained in the list of the prime magnitude, and those of the
hundreds, beginning with the lord high sheriff, who, over and above his
more ancient offices, and those added by the former order, is the first
magistrate of the phylarch, or prerogative troop. The lord lieutenant,
over and above his duty mentioned, is commander-in-chief of the musters of
the youth, and second magistrate of the phylarch. The custos rotulorum is
to return the yearly muster-rolls of the tribe, as well that of the youth
as of the elders, to the rolls in emporium, and is the third magistrate of
the phylarch. The censors by themselves and their sub-censors, that is,
the overseers of the parishes, are to see that the respective laws of the
ballot be observed in all the popular assemblies of the tribe. They have
power also to put such national ministers, as in preaching shall
intermeddle with matters of government, out of their livings, except the
party appeals to the phylarch, or to the Council of Religion, where in
that case the censors shall prosecute. All and every one of these
magistrates, together with the justices of peace, and the jurymen of the
hundreds, amounting in the whole number to threescore and six, are the
prerogative troop or phylarch of the tribe.

"The function of the phylarch or prerogative troop is fivefold:

"First, they are the council of the tribe, and as such to govern
the musters of the same according to the foregoing orders, having
cognizance of what has passed in the congregation or elections made in the
parishes or the hundreds, with power to punish any undue practices, or
variation from their respective rules and orders, under an appeal to the
Parliament. A marriage legitimately is to be pronounced by the parochial
congregation, the muster of the hundred, or the phylarch. And if a tribe
have a desire (which they are to express at the muster by their captains,
every troop by his own) to petition the Parliament the phylarch, as the
council, shall frame the petition in the pavilion, and propose it by
clauses to the ballot of the whole tribe; and the clauses that shall be
affirmed by the ballot of the tribe, and signed by the hands of the six
magistrates of the prime magnitude, shall be received and esteemed by the
Parliament as the petition of the tribe, and no other.

"Secondly, the phylarch has power to call to their assistance what
other troops of the tribe they please (he they elders or youth, whose
discipline will be hereafter directed), and with these to receive the
judges itinerant in their circuits, whom the magistrates of the phylarch
shall assist upon the bench, and the juries elsewhere in their proper
functions according to the more ancient laws and customs of this nation.

"Thirdly, the phylarch shall hold the court called the
quartersessions according to the ancient custom, and therein shall also
hear causes in order to the protection of liberty of conscience, by such
rules as are or shall hereafter be appointed by the Parliament.

"Fourthly, all commissions issued into the tribes by the
Parliament, or by the chancery, are to be directed to the phylarch, or
some of that troop, and executed by the same respectively.

"Fifthly, in the case of levies of money the Parliament shall tax
the phylarchs, the phylarchs shall tax the hundreds, the hundreds the
parishes, and the parishes shall levy it upon themselves. The parishes
having levied the tax-money accordingly, shall return it to the officers
of the hundreds, the hundred to the phylarchs, and the phylarchs to the
Exchequer. But if a man has ten children living, he shall pay no taxes; if
he has five living, he shall pay but half taxes; if he has been married
three years, or be above twenty-five years of age, and has no child or
children lawfully begotten, he shall pay double taxes. And if there happen
to grow any dispute upon these or such other orders as shall or may hereto
be added hereafter, the phylarchs shall judge the tribes, and the
Parliament shall judge the phylarchs. For the rest, if any man shall go
about to introduce the right or power of debate into any popular council
or congregation of this nation, the phylarch or any magistrate of the
hundred, or of the tribe, shall cause him presently to be sent in custody
to the Council of War.

The part of the order relating to the rolls in Emporium being of
singular use, is not unworthy to be somewhat better opened. In what manner
the lists of the parishes, hundreds, and tribes are made, has been shown
in their respective orders, where, after the parties are elected, they
give an account of the whole number of the elders or deputies in their
respective assemblies or musters; the like for this part exactly is done
by the youth in their discipline (to be hereafter shown) wherefore the
lists of the parishes, youth and elders, being summed up, give the whole
number of the people able to bear arms, and the lists of the tribes, youth
and elders, being summed up, give the whole number of the people bearing
arms. This account, being annually recorded by the master of the rolls, is
called the "Pillar of Nilus," because the people, being the
riches of the commonwealth, as they are found to rise or fall by the
degrees of this pillar, like that river, give an account of the public
harvest.

Thus much for the description of the first day's work at the muster,
which happened (as has been shown) to be done as soon as said; for as in
practice it is of small difficulty, so requires it not much time, seeing
the great Council of Venice, consisting of a like number, begins at twelve
of the clock, and elects nine magistrates in one afternoon. But the tribe
being dismissed for this night, repaired to their quarters, under the
conduct of their new magistrates. The next morning returning to the field
very early, the orator proceeded to --

The twelfth order, "Directing the muster of the tribe in the second
day's election, being that of the list called the galaxy; in which the
censors shall prepare the urns according to the directions given in the
ninth order for the second ballot; that is to say, with thirty-six gold
balls in the middle urn, making four orders, and nine electors in every
order, according to the number of the magistrates in the list of the
galaxy, which is as follows:

1. Knight

2. Knight

To be chosen out of the horse.

3. Deputy

4. Deputy

5. Deputy

To be chosen out of the horse.

6. Deputy

7. Deputy

8. Deputy

9. Deputy

To be chosen out of the foot.

"The rest of the ballot shall proceed exactly according to
that of the first day. But, forasmuch as the commonwealth demands as well
the fruits of a man's body as of his mind, he that has not been married
shall not be capable of these magistracies till he be married. If a deputy
already chosen to be an officer in the parish, in the hundred, or in the
tribe, be afterward chosen of the galaxy, it shall be lawful for him to
delegate his office in the parish, in the hundred, or in the tribe, to any
one of his own order being not already chosen into office. The knights and
deputies being chosen, shall he brought to the head of the tribe by the
lord high sheriff, who shall administer to them this oath: 'Ye shall well
and truly observe and keep the orders and customs of this commonwealth
which the people have chosen.' And if any of them shall refuse the oath,
he shall be rejected, and that competitor which had the most voices next
shall be called in his place, who, if he takes the oath, shall be entered
in the list; but if he also refuses the oath, he who had most voices next
shall be called, and so till the number of nine out of those competitors
which had most voices be sworn knights and deputies of the galaxy. (This
clause, in regard to the late divisions, and to the end that no violence
be offered to any man's conscience, to be of force but for the first three
years only.) The knights of the galaxy being elected and sworn, are to
repair, by the Monday next ensuing to the last of March, to the Pantheon
or palace of justice, situated in the metropolis of this commonwealth
(except the Parliament, by reason of a contagious sickness, or some other
occasion, has adjourned to another part of the nation), where they are to
take their places in the Senate, and continue in full power and commission
as senators for the full term of three years next ensuing the date of
their election. The deputies of the galaxy are to repair by the same day
(except as before excepted) to the halo situated in Emporium, where they
are to be listed of the prerogative tribe, or equal representative of the
people; and to continue in full power and commission as their deputies for
the full term of three years next ensuing their election. But, forasmuch
as the term of every magistracy or office in this commonwealth requires an
equal vacation, a knight or deputy of the galaxy, having fulfilled his
term of three years, shall not be re-elected into the same galaxy or any
other, till he has also fulfilled his three years' vacation."

Whoever shall rightly consider the foregoing orders, will be as little
able to find how it is possible that a worshipful knight should declare
himself in ale and beef worthy to serve his country, as how my lord high
sheriff's honor, in case he were protected from the law, could play the
knave. But though the foregoing orders, so far as they regard the
constitution of the Senate and the people, requiring no more as to an
ordinary election than is therein explained, that is but one-third part of
their knights and deputies, are perfect; yet must we in this place, and as
to the institution, of necessity erect a scaffold. For the commonwealth to
the first creation of her councils in full number, required thrice as many
as are eligible by the foregoing orders. Wherefore the orator whose aid in
this place was most necessary, rightly informing the people of the reason,
stayed them two days longer at the muster, and took this course. One list,
containing two knights and seven deputies, he caused to be chosen upon the
second day; which list being called the first galaxy, qualified the
parties elected of it with power for the term of one year, and no longer:
another list, containing two knights and seven deputies more, he caused to
be chosen the third day, which list being called the second galaxy,
qualified the parties elected of it with power for the term of two years,
and no longer. And upon the fourth day he chose the third galaxy,
according as it is directed by the order, empowered for three years; which
lists successively falling (like the signs or constellations of one
hemisphere, which setting, cause those of the other to rise) cast the
great orbs of this commonwealth into an annual, triennial, and perpetual
revolution.

The business of the muster being thus happily finished, Hermes de
Caduceo, lord orator of the tribe of Nubia, being now put into her first
rapture, caused one of the censor's pulpits to be planted in front of the
squadron, and ascending into the same, spake after this manner:

"MY LORDS, THE MAGISTRATES AND THE PEOPLE OF THE TRIBE OF NUBIA:

"We have this day solemnized the happy nuptials of the two greatest
princes that are upon the earth or in nature, arms and councils, in the
mutual embraces whereof consists your whole commonwealth; whose councils
upon their perpetual wheelings, marches, and countermarches, create her
armies, and whose armies with the golden volleys of the ballot at once
create and salute her councils. There be those (such is the world at
present) that think it ridiculous to see a nation exercising its civil
functions in military discipline; while they, committing their buff to
their servants, come themselves to hold trenchards. For what avails it
such as are unarmed, or (which is all one) whose education acquaints them
not with the proper use of their swords, to be called citizens? What were
2,000 or 3,000 of you, though never so well affected to your country, but
naked, to one troop of mercenary soldiers? If they should come upon the
field and say, 'Gentlemen, it is thought fit that such and such men should
be chosen by you,' where were your liberty? or, 'Gentlemen, parliaments
are exceeding good, but you are to have a little patience; these times are
not so fit for them,' where were your commonwealth? What causes the
monarchy of the Turks but servants in arms? What was it that begot the
glorious Commonwealth of Rome but the sword in the hands of her citizens?
Wherefore my glad eyes salute the serenity and brightness of this day with
a shower that shall not cloud it.

"Behold the army of Israel become a commonwealth, and the
Commonwealth of Israel remaining an army, with her rulers of tens and of
fifties, her rulers of hundreds and thousands, drawing near (as this day
throughout our happy fields) to the lot by her tribes, increased above
threefold, and led up by her phylarchs or princes, to sit upon fifty
thrones, judging the fifty tribes of Oceana! Or, is it Athens, breaking
from her iron sepulchre, where she has been so long trampled by hosts of
Janizaries? For certainly that is the voice of Theseus, having gathered
his scattered Athenians into one city. This freeborn nation lives not upon
the dole or bounty of one man, but distributing her annual magistracies
and honors with her own hand, is herself King People -- (At which the
orator was awhile interrupted with shouts, but at length proceeded.) is it
grave Lacedaemon in her armed tribe, divided by her oboe and her mora,
which appears to chide me that I teach the people to talk, or conceive
such language as is dressed like a woman, to be a fit usher of the joys of
liberty into the hearts of men? is it Rome in her victorious arms (for so
she held her concio or congregation) that congratulates with us, for
finding out that which she could not hit on, and binding up her Comitia
curiata, centuriata, and tributa, in one inviolable league of union? Or is
it the great council of incomparable Venice, bowling forth by the selfsame
ballot her immortal commonwealth? For, neither by reason nor by experience
is it impossible that a commonwealth should be immortal; seeing the people
being the materials, never die; and the form, which is motion, must,
without opposition, be endless. The bowl which is thrown from your hand,
if there be no rub, no impediment, shall never cease: for which cause the
glorious luminaries that are the bowls of God, were once thrown forever;
and next these, those of Venice. But certainly, my lords, whatever these
great examples may have shown us, we are the first that have shown to the
world a commonwealth established in her rise upon fifty such towers, and
so garrisoned as are the tribes of Oceana, containing 100,000 elders upon
the annual list, and yet but an outguard; besides her marching armies to
be equal in the discipline, and in the number of her youth.

"And forasmuch as sovereign power is a necessary but a
formidable creature, not unlike the powder which (as you are soldiers) is
at once your safety and your danger, being subject to take fire against
you as well as for you, how well and securely is she, by your galaxies so
collected as to be in full force and vigor and yet so distributed that it
is impossible you should be blown up by your own magazine? Let them who
will have it, that power if it be confined cannot be sovereign, tell us,
whether our rivers do not enjoy a more secure and fruitful reign within
their proper banks, than if it were lawful for them, in ravaging our
harvests, to spill themselves? whether souls, not confined to their
peculiar bodies, do govern them any more than those of witches in their
trances? whether power, not confined to the bounds of reason and virtue,
has any other bounds than those of vice and passion? or if vice and
passion be boundless, and reason and virtue have certain limits, on which
of these thrones holy men should anoint their sovereign? But to blow away
this dust, the sovereign power of a commonwealth is no more bounded, that
is to say straitened, than that of a monarch; but is balanced. The eagle
mounts not to her proper pitch, if she be bounded, nor is free if she be
not balanced. And lest a monarch should think he can reach further with
his sceptre, the Roman eagle upon such a balance spread her wings from the
ocean to Euphrates. Receive the sovereign power; you have received it,
hold it fast, embrace it forever in your shining arms. The virtue of the
loadstone is not impaired or limited, but receives strength and
nourishment, by being bound in iron. And so giving your lordships much
joy, I take my leave of this tribe."

The orator descending, had the period of his speech made with a vast
applause and exultation of the whole tribe, attending him for that night
to his quarter, as the phylarch with some commanded troops did the next
day to the frontiers of the tribe, where leave was taken on both sides
with more tears than grief.

So a tribe is the third division of land occasioned by the third
collection of the people, whose functions proper to that place are
contained in the five foregoing orders.

The institution of the commonwealth was such as needed those props and
scaffolds which may have troubled the reader; but I shall here take them
away, and come to the constitution which stands by itself, and yields a
clearer prospect.

The motions, by what has been already shown, are spherical; and
spherical motions have their proper centre, for which cause (ere I proceed
further) it will be necessary, for the better understanding of the whole,
that I discover the centre whereupon the motions of this commonwealth are
formed.

The centre, or basis of every government, is no other than the
fundamental laws of the same.

Fundamental laws are such as state what it is that a man, and what the
means may call his own, that is to say, property; be whereby a man may
enjoy his own, that is to say, protection. The first is also called
dominion, and the second empire or sovereign power, whereof this (as has
been shown) is the natural product of the former, for such as is the
balance of dominion in a nation, such is the nature of its empire.

Wherefore the fundamental laws of Oceana, or the centre of this
commonwealth, are the agrarian and the ballot: the agrarian by the balance
of dominion preserving equality in the root; and the ballot by an equal
rotation conveying it into the branch, or exercise of sovereign power, as,
to begin with the former, appears by --

The thirteenth order, "Constituting the agrarian laws of Oceana,
Marpesia, and Panopea, whereby it is ordained, first, for all such lands
as are lying and being within the proper territories of Oceana, that every
man who is at present possessed, or shall hereafter be possessed, of an
estate in land exceeding the revenue of £2,000 a year, and having
more than one son, shall leave his lands either equally divided among
them, in case the lands amount to above £2,000 a year to each, or so
near equally, in case they come under, that the greater part or portion of
the same remaining to the eldest exceed not the value of £2,000
revenue. And no man, not in present possession of lands above the value of
£2,000 by the year, shall receive, enjoy (except by lawful
inheritance) acquire, or, purchase to himself lands within the said
territories, amounting, with those already in his possession, above the
said revenue. And if a man has a daughter or daughters, except she be an
heiress or they be heiresses, he shall not leave or give to any. One of
them in marriage, or otherwise, for her portion, above the value of £1,500
in lands, goods, and moneys. Nor shall any friend, kinsman, or kinswoman
add to her or their portion or portions that are so provided for, to make
any one of them greater. Nor shall any man demand or have more in marriage
with any woman. Nevertheless an heiress shall enjoy her lawful
inheritance, and a widow, whatsoever the bounty or affection of her
husband shall bequeath to her, to be divided in the first generation,
wherein it is divisible according as has been shown.

"Secondly, for lands lying and being within the territories of
Marpesia, the agrarian shall hold in all parts as it is established in
Oceana, except only in the standard or proportion of estates in land,
which shall be set for Marpesia, at £500. And,

"Thirdly, for Panopea, the agrarian shall hold in all
parts, as in Oceana. And whosoever possessing above the proportion allowed
by these laws, shall be lawfully convicted of the same, shall forfeit the
overplus to the use of the State."

Agrarian laws of all others have ever been the greatest bugbears, and so
in the institution were these, at which time it was ridiculous to see how
strange a fear appeared in everybody of that which, being good for all,
could hurt nobody. But instead of the proof of this order, I shall out of
those many debates that happened ere it could be passed, insert two
speeches that were made at the Council of legislators, the first by the
Right Honorable Philautus de Garbo, a young man, being heir-apparent to a
very noble family, and one of the councillors, who expressed himself as
follows:

"May it please your Highness, my Lord Archon of Oceana.

"If I did not, to my capacity, know from how profound a councillor
I dissent, it would certainly be no hard task to make it as light as the
day. First, that an agrarian is altogether unnecessary; secondly, that it
is dangerous to a commonwealth; thirdly, that it is insufficient to keep
out monarchy; fourthly, that it ruins families; fifthly, that it destroys
industry; and last of all, that though it were indeed of any good use, it
will be a matter of such difficulty to introduce in this nation, and so to
settle that it may be lasting, as is altogether invincible.

"First, that an agrarian is unnecessary to a commonwealth, what
clearer testimony can there be than that the commonwealths which are our
contemporaries (Venice, to which your Highness gives the upper hand of all
antiquity, being one) have no such thing? And there can be no reason why
they have it not, seeing it is in the sovereign power at any time to
establish such an order, but that they need it not; wherefore no wonder if
Aristotle, who pretends to be a good commonwealths man, has long since
derided Phaleas, to whom it was attributed by the Greeks, for his
invention.

"Secondly, that an agrarian is dangerous to a commonwealth is
affirmed upon no slight authority seeing Machiavel is positive that it was
the dissension which happened about the agrarian that caused the
destruction of Rome; nor do I think that it did much better in Lacedaemon,
as I shall show anon.

"Thirdly, that it is insufficient to keep out monarchy cannot
without impiety be denied, the holy Scriptures bearing witness that the
Commonwealth of Israel, notwithstanding her agrarian, submitted her neck
to the arbitrary yoke of her princes.

"Fourthly, therefore, to come to my next assertion, that it is
destructive to families: this also is so apparent, that it needs pity
rather than proof. Why alas, do you bind a nobility (which no generation
shall deny to have been the first that freely sacrificed their blood to
the ancient liberties of this people) on an unholy altar? Why are the
people taught that their liberty, which, except our noble ancestors had
been born, must have long since been buried, cannot now be born except we
be buried? A commonwealth should have the innocence of the dove. Let us
leave this purchase of her birth to the serpent, which eats itself out of
the womb of its mother.

"Fifthly but it may be said, perhaps, that we are fallen from our
first love, become proud and idle. It is certain, my lords, that the hand
of God is not upon us for nothing. But take heed how you admit of such
assaults and sallies upon men's estates, as may slacken the nerve of
labor, and give others also reason to believe that their sweat is vain; or
else, whatsoever be pretended, your agrarian (which is my fifth assertion)
must indeed destroy industry. For, that so it did in Lacedaemon is most
apparent, as also that it could do no otherwise, where every man having
his forty quarters of barley, with wine proportionable, supplied him out
of his own lot by his laborer or helot; and being confined in that to the
scantling above which he might not live, there was not any such thing as a
trade, or other art, except that of war, in exercise. Wherefore a Spartan,
if he were not in arms, must sit and play with his Angers, whence ensued
perpetual war, and, the estate of the city being as little capable of
increase as that of the citizens, her inevitable ruin. Now what better
ends you can propose to yourselves in the like ways, I do not so well see
as I perceive that there may be worse; for Lacedaemon yet was free from
civil war: but if you employ your citizens no better than she did, I
cannot promise you that you shall fare so well, because they are still
desirous of war that hope that it may be profitable to them; and the
strongest security you can give of peace, is to make it gainful. Otherwise
men will rather choose that whereby they may break your laws, than that
whereby your laws may break them. Which I speak not so much in relation to
the nobility or such as would be holding, as to the people or them that
would be getting; the passion in these being so much the stronger, as a
man's felicity is weaker in the fruition of things, than in their
prosecution and increase.

"Truly, my lords, it is my fear, that by taking of more hands, and
the best from industry, you will farther endamage it, than can be repaired
by laying on a few, and the worst; while the nobility must be forced to
send their sons to the plough, and, as if this were not enough, to marry
their daughters also to farmers.

"Sixthly, but I do not see (to come to the last point) how
it is possible that this thing should be brought about, to your good I
mean, though it may to the destruction of many. For that the agrarian of
Israel, or that of Lacedaemon, might stand, is no such miracle; the lands,
without any consideration of the former proprietor, being surveyed and
cast into equal lots, which could neither be bought, nor sold, nor
multiplied: so that they knew whereabout to have a man. But in this nation
no such division can be introduced, the lands being already in the hands
of proprietors, and such whose estates lie very rarely together, but mixed
one with another being also of tenures in nature so different, that as
there is no experience that an agrarian was ever introduced in such a
case, so there is no appearance how or reason why it should: but that
which is against reason and experience is impossible."

The case of my Lord Philautus was the most concerned in the whole
nation; for he had four younger brothers, his father being yet living, to
whom he was heir of £10,000 a year. Wherefore being a man both of
good parts and esteem, his words wrought both upon men's reason and
passions, and had borne a stroke at the head of the business, if my Lord
Archon had not interposed the buckler in this oration:

"MY LORDS, THE LEGISLATORS OF OCEANA:

"My Lord Philautus has made a thing which is easy to seem hard; if
the thanks were due to his eloquence, it would be worthy of less praise
than that he owes it to his merit, and the love he has most deservedly
purchased of all men: nor is it rationally to be feared that he who is so
much beforehand in his private, should be in arrear in his public,
capacity. Wherefore, my lord's tenderness throughout his speech arising
from no other principle than his solicitude lest the agrarian should be
hurtful to his country, it is no less than my duty to give the best
satisfaction I am able to so good a patriot, taking every one of his
doubts in the order proposed. And,

"First, whereas my lord, upon observation of the modern
commonwealths, is of opinion that an agrarian is not necessary: it must be
confessed that at the first sight of them there is some appearance
favoring his assertion, but upon accidents of no precedent to us. For the
commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland, I mean of those leagues, being
situated in countries not alluring the inhabitants to wantonness, but
obliging them to universal industry, have an implicit agrarian in the
nature of them: and being not obnoxious to a growing nobility (which, as
long as their former monarchies had spread the wing over them, could
either not at all be hatched, or was soon broken) are of no example to us,
whose experience in this point has been to the contrary. But what if even
in these governments there be indeed an explicit agrarian? For when the
law commands an equal or near equal distribution of a man's estate in land
among his children, as it is done in those countries, a nobility cannot
grow; and so there needs no agrarian, or rather there is one. And for the
growth of the nobility in Venice (if so it be, for Machiavel observes in
that republic, as a cause of it, a great mediocrity of estates) it is not
a point that she is to fear, but might study, seeing she consists of
nothing else but nobility, by which, whatever their estates suck from the
people, especially if it comes equally, is digested into the better blood
of that commonwealth, which is all, or the greatest, benefit they can have
by accumulation. For how unequal soever you will have them to be in their
incomes, they have officers of the pomp, to bring them equal in expenses,
or at least in the ostentation or show of them. And so unless the
advantage of an estate consists more in the measure than in the use of it,
the authority of Venice does but enforce our agrarian; nor shall a man
evade or elude the prudence of it, by the authority of any other
commonwealth.

"For if a commonwealth has been introduced at once, as those of
Israel and Lacedaemon, you are certain to find her underlaid with this as
the main foundation; nor, if she is obliged more to fortune than prudence,
has she raised her head without musing upon this matter, as appears by
that of Athens, which through her defect in this point, says Aristotle,
introduced her ostracism, as most of the democracies of Greece. But, not
to restrain a fundamental of such latitude to any one kind of government,
do we not yet see that if there be a sole landlord of a vast territory, he
is the Turk? that if a few landlords overbalance a populous country, they
have store of servants? that if a people be in an equal balance, they can
have no lords? that no government can otherwise be erected, than upon some
one of these foundations? that no one of these foundations (each being
else apt to change into some other) can give any security to the
government, unless it be fixed? that through the want of this fixation,
potent monarchy and commonwealths have fallen upon the heads of the
people, and accompanied their own sad ruins with vast effusions of
innocent blood? Let the fame, as was the merit of the ancient nobility of
this nation, be equal to or above what has been already said, or can be
spoken, yet have we seen not only their glory but that of a throne, the
most indulgent to and least invasive for so many ages upon the liberty of
a people that the world has known, through the mere want of fixing her
foot by a proportionable agrarian upon her proper foundation, to have
fallen with such horror as has been a spectacle of astonishment to the
whole earth. And were it well argued from one calamity, that we ought not
to prevent another? Nor is Aristotle so good a commonwealths man for
deriding the invention of Phaleas as in recollecting himself, where he
says that democracies, when a less part of their citizens overtop the rest
in wealth, degenerate into oligarchies and principalities; and, which
comes nearer to the present purpose, that the greater part of the nobility
of Tarentum coming accidentally to be ruined, the government of the few
came by consequence to be changed into that of the many.

"These things considered, I cannot see how an agrarian, as to the
fixation or security of a government, can be less than necessary. And if a
cure be necessary, it excuses not the patient, his disease being otherwise
desperate, that it is dangerous; which was the case of Rome, not so stated
by Machiavel, where he says, that the strife about the agrarian caused the
destruction of that commonwealth. As if when a senator was not rich (as
Crassus held) except he could pay an army, that commonwealth could expect
nothing but ruin whether in strife about the agrarian, or without it. 'Of
late,' says Livy, 'riches have introduced avarice, and voluptuous
pleasures abounding have through lust and luxury begot a desire of lasting
and destroying all good orders.' if the greatest security of a
commonwealth consists in being provided with the proper antidote against
this poison, her greatest danger, must be from the absence of an agrarian,
which is the whole truth of the Roman example. For the Laconic, I shall
reserve the further explication of it, as my lord also did, to another
place; and first see whether an agrarian proportioned to a popular
government be sufficient to keep out monarchy. My lord is for the
negative, and fortified by the people of Israel electing a king. To which
I say that the action of the people therein expressed is a full answer to
the objection of that example; for the monarchy neither grew upon them,
nor could; by reason of the agrarian, possibly have invaded them, if they
had not pulled it upon themselves by the election of a king. Which being
an accident, the like whereof is not to be found in any other people so
planted, nor in this till, as it is manifest, they were given up by God to
infatuation (for says he to Samuel, 'They have not rejected thee, but they
have rejected me, that I should not reign over them,), has something in it
which is apparent, by what went before, to have been besides the course of
nature, and by what followed.

"For the King having no other foundation than the calamities of the
people, so often beaten by their enemies, that despairing of themselves
they were contented with any change, if he had peace as in the days of
Solomon, left but a slippery throne to his successor, as appeared by
Rehoboam. And the agrarian, notwithstanding the monarchy thus introduced,
so faithfully preserved the root of that commonwealth, that it shot forth
oftener and by intervals continued longer than any other government, as
may be computed from the institution of the same by Joshua, 1,465 years
before Christ, to the total dissolution of it, which happened in the reign
of the emperor Adrian, 135 years after the incarnation. A people planted
upon an equal agrarian, and holding to it, if they part with their
liberty, must do it upon good-will, and make but a bad title of their
bounty. As to instance yet further in that which is proposed by the
present order to this nation, the standard whereof is at £2,000 a
year; the whole territory of Oceana being divided by this proportion,
amounts to 5,000 lots. So the lands of Oceana being thus distributed, and
bound to this distribution, can never fall to fewer than 5,000
proprietors. But 5,000 proprietors so seized will not agree to break the
agrarian, for that were to agree to rob one another; nor to bring in a
king, because they must maintain him, and can have no benefit by him; nor
to exclude the people, because they can have as little by that, and must
spoil their militia. So the commonwealth continuing upon the balance
proposed, though it should come into 5,000 hands, can never alter, and
that it should ever come into 5,000 hands is as improbable as anything in
the world that is not altogether impossible.

"My lord's other considerations are more private, as that, this
order destroys families; which is as if one should lay the ruin of some
ancient castle to the herbs which usually grow out of them, the
destruction of those families being that indeed which naturally produced
this order. For we do not now argue for that which we would have, but for
that which we are already possessed of, as would appear if a note were but
taken of all such as have at this day above £2,000 a year in Oceana.
If my lord should grant (and I will put it with the most) that they who
are proprietors in land, exceeding this proportion, exceed not 300, with
what brow can the interest of so few be balanced with that of the whole
nation? or rather, what interest have they to put in such a balance? they
would live as they had been accustomed to do; who hinders them? they would
enjoy their estates; who touches them? they would dispose of what they
have according to the interest of their families; it is that which we
desire. A man has one son, let him be called; would he enjoy his father's
estate? it is his, his son's, and his son's son's after him. A man has
five sons, let them be called; would they enjoy their father's estate? It
is divided among them; for we have four votes for one in the same family,
and therefore this must be the interest of the family, or the family knows
not its own interest. If a man shall dispute otherwise, he must draw his
arguments from custom and from greatness, which was the interest of the
monarchy, not of the family; and we are now a commonwealth. If the
monarchy could not bear with such divisions because they tendered to a
commonwealth, neither can a commonwealth connive at such accumulations
because they tend to a monarchy. If the monarchy might make bold with so
many for the good of one, we may make bold with one for the good of so
many, nay, for the good of all.

"My lords, it comes into my mind, that which upon occasion of the
variety of parties enumerated in our late civil wars, was said by a friend
of mine coming home from his travels, about the latter end of these
troubles; that he admired how it came to pass, that younger brothers,
especially being so many more in number than their elder did not unite as
one man against a tyranny, the like whereof has not been exercised in any
other nation. And truly, when I consider that our countrymen are none of
the worst-natured, I must confess I marvel much how it comes to pass that
we should use our children as we do our puppies -take one, lay it in the
lap, feed it with every good bit, and drown five; nay, yet worse,
forasmuch as the puppies are once drowned, whereas the children are left
perpetually drowning. Really, my lords, it is a flinty custom! and all
this for his cruel ambition, that would raise himself a pillar a golden
pillar for his monument, though he has children, his own reviving flesh,
and a kind of immortality. And this is that interest of a family, for
which we are to think ill of a government that will not endure it. But
quiet ourselves; the land through which the river Nilus wanders in one
stream, is barren; but where it parts into seven, it multiplies its
fertile shores by distributing, yet keeping and improving, such a
propriety and nutrition, as is a prudent agrarian to a well-ordered
commonwealth.

"Nor (to come to the fifth assertion) is a political body rendered
any fitter for industry by having one gouty and another withered leg, than
a natural. It tends not to the improvement of merchandise that there be
some who have no need of their trading, and others that are not able to
follow it. If confinement discourages industry, an estate in money is not
confined, and lest industry should want whereupon to work, land is not
engrossed or entailed upon any man, but remains at its devotion. I wonder
whence the computation can arise, that this should discourage industry.
Two thousand pounds a year a man may enjoy in Oceana, as much in Panopea,
£500 in Marpesia; there be other plantations, and the commonwealth
will have more. Who knows how far the arms of our agrarian may extend
themselves? and whether he that might have left a pillar, may not leave a
temple of many pillars to his more pious memory? Where there is some
measure in riches, a man may be rich, but if you will have them to be
infinite, there will be no end of starving himself, and wanting what he
has: and what pains does such a one take to be poor Furthermore, if a man
shall think that there may be an industry less greasy or more noble, and
so cast his thoughts upon the commonwealth, he will have leisure for her
and she riches and honors for him; his sweat shall smell like Alexander's.
My Lord Philautus is a young man who, enjoying his £10,000 a year,
may keep a noble house in the old way, and have homely guests; and having
but two, by the means proposed, may take the upper hand of his great
ancestors; with reverence to whom, I may say, there has not been one of
them would have disputed his place with a Roman consul.

"My lord, do not break my heart; the nobility shall go to no other
ploughs than those which we call our consuls. But, says he, it having been
so with Lacedaemon, that neither the city nor the citizens were capable of
increase, a blow was given by that agrarian, which ruined both. And what
are we concerned with that agrarian, or that blow while our citizens and
our city (and that by our agrarian) are both capable of increase? The
Spartan, if he made a conquest, had no citizens to hold it; the Oceaner
will have enow. The Spartan could have no trade; the Oceaner may have all.
The agrarian in Laconia, that it might bind on knapsacks, forbidding all
other arts but that of war, could not make an army of above 30,000
citizens. The agrarian in Oceana, without interruption of traffic,
provides us in the fifth part of the youth an annual source or fresh
spring of 100,000, besides our provincial auxiliaries, out of which to
draw marching armies; and as many elders, not feeble, but men most of them
in the flower of their age, and in arms for the defence of our
territories. The agrarian in Laconia banished money, this multiplies it;
that allowed a matter of twenty or thirty acres to a man, this 2,000 or
3,000; there is no comparison between them. And yet I differ so much from
my lord, or his opinion that the agrarian was the ruin of Lacedaemon, that
I hold it no less than demonstrable to have been her main support. For if,
banishing all other diversions, it could not make an army of above 30,000,
then, letting in all other diversions, it must have broken that army.
Wherefore Lysander, bringing in the golden spoils of Athens, irrevocably
ruined that commonwealth; and is a warning to us, that in giving
encouragement to industry, we also remember that covetousness is the root
of all evil. And our agrarian can never be the cause of those seditions
threatened by my lord, but is the proper cure of them, as Lucan notes well
in the state of Rome before the civil wars, which happened through the
want of such an antidote.

"Why then are we mistaken, as if we intended not equal advantages
in our commonwealth to either sex, because we would not have women's
fortunes consist in that metal which exposes them to cutpurses? If a man
cuts my purse I may have him by the heels or by the neck for it; whereas a
man may cut a woman's purse, and have her for his pains in fetters. How
brutish, and much more than brutish, is that commonwealth which prefers
the earth before the fruits of the womb? If the people be her treasure,
the staff by which she is sustained and comforted, with what justice can
she suffer them, by whom she is most enriched, to be for that cause the
most impoverished? And yet we see the gifts of God, and the bounties of
heaven in fruitful families, through this wretched custom of marrying for
money, become their insupportable grief and poverty. Nor falls this so
heavy upon the lower sort, being better able to shift for themselves, as
upon the nobility or gentry. For what avails it in this case, from whence
their veins have derived their blood; while they shall see the tallow of a
chandler sooner converted into that beauty which is required in a bride? I
appeal, whether my Lord Philautus or myself be the advocate of nobility;
against which, in the case proposed by me, there would be nothing to hold
the balance. And why is a woman, if she may have but £1,500, undone?
If she be unmarried, what nobleman allows his daughter in that case a
greater revenue than so much money may command? And if she marry, no
nobleman can give his daughter a greater portion than she has. Who is hurt
in this case? -- nay, who is not benefited? If the agrarian gives us the
sweat of our brows without diminution; if it prepares our table; if it
makes our cup to overflow, and above all this, in providing for our
children, anoints our heads with that oil which takes away the greatest of
worldly cares; what man, that is not besotted with a covetousness as vain
as endless, can imagine such a constitution to be his poverty? Seeing
where no woman can be considerable for her portion, no portion will be
considerable with a woman; and so his children will not only find better
preferments without his brokage, but more freedom of their own affections.

"We are wonderful severe in laws, that they shall not marry without
our consent, as if it were care and tenderness over them; but is it not
lest we should not have the other £1,000 with this son, or the other £100
a year more in jointure for that daughter? These, when we are crossed in
them, are the sins for which we water our couch with tears, but not of
penitence. Seeing whereas it is a mischief beyond any that we can do to
our enemies, we persist to make nothing of breaking the affection of our
children. But there is in this agrarian a homage to pure and spotless
love, the consequence whereof I will not give for all your romances. An
alderman makes not his daughter a countess till he has given her £20,000,
nor a romance a considerable mistress till she be a princess; these are
characters of bastard love. But if our agrarian excludes ambition and
covetousness, we shall at length have the care of our own breed, in which
we have been curious as to our dogs and horses. The marriage-bed will be
truly legitimate, and the race of the commonwealth not spurious.

"But (impar magnanimis ausis, imparque dolori) I am hurled from all
my hopes by my lord's last assertion of impossibility, that the root from
whence we imagine these fruits should be planted or thrive in this soil.
And why? Because of the mixture of estates and variety of tenures.
Nevertheless, there is yet extant in the Exchequer an old survey of the
whole nation; wherefore such a thing is not impossible. Now if a new
survey were taken at the present rates, and the law made that no man
should hold hereafter above so much land as is valued therein at £2,000
a year, it would amount to a good and sufficient agrarian. It is true that
there would remain some difficulty in the different kind of rents, and
that it is a matter requiring not only more leisure than we have, but an
authority which may be better able to bow men to a more general consent
than is to be wrought out of them by such as are in our capacity.
Wherefore as to the manner, it is necessary that we refer it to the
Parliament; but as to the matter, they cannot otherwise fix their
government upon the right balance.

"I shall conclude with a few words to some parts of the order,
which my lord has omitted. As first to the consequences of the agrarian to
be settled in Marpesia, which irreparably breaks the aristocracy of that
nation; being of such a nature, as standing, it is not possible that you
should govern. For while the people of that country are little better than
the cattle of the nobility, you must not wonder if, according as these can
make their markets with foreign princes, you find those to be driven upon
your grounds. And if you be so tender, now you have it in your power, as
not to hold a hand upon them that may prevent the slaughter which must
otherwise ensue in like cases, the blood will lie at your door. But in
holding such a hand upon them, you may settle the agrarian; and in
settling the agrarian, you give that people not only liberty, but lands;
which makes your protection necessary to their security; and their
contribution due to your protection, as to their own safety.

"For the agrarian of Panopea, it allowing such proportions
of so good land, men that conceive themselves straitened by this in
Oceana, will begin there to let themselves forth, where every citizen will
in time have his villa. And there is no question, but the improvement of
that country by this means must be far greater than it has been in the
best of former times. "I have no more to say, but that in those
ancient and heroic ages (when men thought that to be necessary which was
virtuous) the nobility of Athens, having the people so much engaged in
their debt that there remained no other question among these than which of
those should be king, no sooner heard Solon speak than they quitted their
debts, and restored the commonwealth; which ever after held a solemn and
annual feast called the Sisacthia, or Recision, in memory of that action.
Nor is this example the phoenix; for at the institution by Lycurgus, the
nobility having estates (as ours here) in the lands of Laconia, upon no
other valuable consideration than the commonwealth proposed by him, threw
them up to be parcelled by his agrarian. But now when no man is desired to
throw up a farthing of his money, or a shovelful of his earth, and that
all we can do is but to make a virtue of necessity, we are disputing
whether we should have peace or war. For peace you cannot have without
some government, nor any government without the proper balance. Wherefore
if you will not fix this which you have, the rest is blood, for without
blood you can bring in no other."

By these speeches made at the institution of the agrarian you may
perceive what were the grounds of it. The next is --

The fourteenth order, "Constituting the ballot of Venice, as it is
fitted by several alterations, and appointed to every assembly, to be the
constant and only way of giving suffrage in this commonwealth, according
to the following scheme."

I shall endeavor by the following figure to demonstrate the manner of
the Venetian ballot (a thing as difficult in discourse or writing, as
facile in practice) according to the use of it in Oceana. The whole figure
represents the Senate, containing, as to the house or form of sitting, a
square and a half; the tribunal at the upper end being ascended by four
steps. On the uppermost of these sit the magistrates that constitute the
signory of the commonwealth, that is to say, A the strategus; B the
orator; C the three commissioners of the great seal; D the three
commissioners of the Treasury, whereof one, E, exercises for the present
the office of a censor at the middle urn, F To the two upper steps of the
tribunal answer G, G-G, G, the two long benches next the wall on each side
of the house; the outwardmost of which are equal in height to the
uppermost step, and the innermost equal in height to the next. Of these
four benches consists the first seal; as the second seat consists in like
manner of those four benches H, H-H, H, which being next the floor, are
equal in height to the two nethermost steps of the throne. So the whole
house is distributed into two seats, each consisting of four benches.

This distribution causes not only the greater conveniency; as will be
shown, to the senators in the exercise of their function at the ballot,
but a greater grace to the aspect of the Senate. In the middle of the
outward benches stand I, 12 the chairs of the censors, those being their
ordinary places, though upon occasion of the ballot they descend, and sit
where they are shown by K, K at each of the outward urns L, L. Those M, M
that sit with their tables, and the bowls N, N before them, upon the
halfspace or second step of the tribunal from the floor, are the clerks or
secretaries of the house. Upon the short seats O, O on the floor (which
should have been represented by woolsacks) sit: P, the two tribunes of the
horse. Q, the two tribunes of the foot; and R, R-R, R the judges, all
which magistrates are assistants, but have no suffrage. This posture of
the Senate considered, the ballot is performed as follows:

First, whereas the gold balls are of several suits, and accordingly
marked with several letters of the alphabet, a secretary presents a little
urn (wherein there is one ball of every suit or mark) to the strategus and
the orator; and look what letter the strategus draws, the same and no
other is to be used for that time in the middle urn F; the like for the
letter drawn by the orator is to be observed for the side urns L, L, that
is to say if the strategus drew a ball with an A, all the gold balls in
the middle urn for that day are marked with the letter A; and if the
orator drew a B, all the gold balls in the side urn for that day are
marked with the letter B, which done immediately before the ballot, and so
the letter unknown to the ballotants, they can use no fraud or juggling;
otherwise a man might carry a gold ball in his hand, and seem to have
drawn it out of an urn. He that draws a gold ball at any urn, delivers it
to the censor or assessor of that urn, who views the character, and allows
accordingly of his lot.

The strategus and the orator having drawn for the letters, the urns are
prepared accordingly by one of the commissioners and the two censors. The
preparation of the urns is After this manner. If the Senate be to elect,
for example, the list called the tropic of magistrates, which is this:

The Lord Strategus;

The Lord Orator;

The Third Commissioner of the Great Seal;

The Third Commissioner of the Treasury;

The First Censor;

The Second Censor;

this list or schedule consists of six magistracies, and to every
magistracy there are to be four competitors; that is, in all
four-and-twenty competitors proposed to the house. They that are to
propose the competitors are called electors, and no elector can propose
above one competitor: wherefore for the proposing of four-and-twenty
competitors you must have four-and-twenty electors; and whereas the ballot
consists of a lot and of a suffrage, the lot is for no other use than for
the designation of electors; and he that draws a gold ball at the middle
urn is an elector. Now, as to have four-and-twenty competitors proposed,
you must have four-and-twenty electors made, so to have four-and-twenty
electors made by lot, you must have four-and-twenty gold balls in the
middle urn; and these (because otherwise it would be no lot) mixed with a
competent number of blanks, or silver balls. Wherefore to the
four-and-twenty gold balls cast six-and-twenty silver ones, and those
(reckoning the blanks with the prizes) make fifty balls in the middle urn.
This done (because no man can come to the middle urn that has not first
drawn a gold ball at one of the side urns) and to be sure that the prizes
or gold balls in this urn be all drawn, there must come to it fifty
persons; therefore there must be in each of the side urns five-and-twenty
gold balls, which in both come to fifty; and to the end that every senator
may have his lot, the gold balls in the side urns are to be made up with
blanks equal to the number of the ballotants at either urn; for example,
the house consisting of 300 senators, there must be in each of the side
urns 125 blanks and twenty-five prizes, which come in both the side urns
to 300 balls. This is the whole mystery of preparing the urns, which the
censors having skill to do accordingly, the rest of the ballot, whether
the parties balloting understand it or not must of necessary consequence
come right; and they can neither be out, nor fall into any confusion in
the exercise of this art.

But the ballot, as I said, is of two parts, lot and suffrage, or the
proposition and result. The lot determines who shall propose the
competitors; and the result of the Senate, which of the competitors shall
be the magistrates. The whole, to begin with the lot, proceeds in this
manner:

The first secretary with an audible voice reads first the list of the
magistrates to be chosen for the day, then the oath for fair election, at
which the senators hold up their hands; which done, another secretary
presents a little urn to the strategus, in which are four balls, each of
them having one of these four inscriptions: "First seat at the upper
end," "First seat at the lower end," "Second seat at
the upper end," "Second seat at the lower end." And look
which of them the strategus draws, the secretary pronouncing the
inscription with a loud voice, the seat so called comes accordingly to the
urns: this in the figure is the second seat at the upper end. The manner
of their coming to the side urns is in double files, that being two holes
in the cover of each side urn, by which means two may draw at once. The
senators therefore S, S-S, S are coming from the upper end of their seats
H, H-H, H to the side urns L, L. The senators T T-T are drawing. The
senator V has drawn a gold ball at his side urn, and is going to the
middle urn F, where the senator W, having done the like at the other side
urn, is already drawing. But the senators X, X-X, X having drawn blanks at
their side urns, and thrown them into the bowls Y Y standing at the feet
of the urns, are marching by the lower end into their seats again; the
senator a having done the like at the middle urn, is also throwing his
blank into the bowl b and marching to his seat again: for a man by a prize
at a side urn gains no more than right to come to the middle urn, where,
if he draws a blank, his fortune at the side urn comes to nothing at all;
wherefore he also returns to his place. But the senator C has had a prize
at the middle urn, where the commissioner, having viewed his ball, and
found the mark to be right, he marches up the steps to the seat of the
electors, which is the form d set across the tribunal, where he places
himself, according as he was drawn, with the other electors e, e, e drawn
before him. These are not to look back, but sit with their faces toward
the signory or state, till their number amount to that of the magistrates
to be that day chosen, which for the present, as was shown, are six:
wherefore six electors being made, they are reckoned according as they
were drawn: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, in their order,
and the first six that are chosen are the first order of electors.

The first order of electors being made, are conducted by a secretary,
with a copy of the list to be chosen, out of the Senate, and into a
committee or council-chamber, being neither suffered by the way, nor in
their room (till the ballot be ended), to have conference with any but
themselves; wherefore the secretary, having given them their oath that
they shall make election according to the law and their conscience,
delivers them the list, and seats himself at the lower end of the table
with his pen and paper, while another secretary keeps the door.

By such time as the first order of electors are thus seated, the second
order of electors is drawn, who, with a second copy of the same list, are
conducted into another committee-chamber, by other secretaries performing
the same office with the former.

The like exactly is done by the third and by the fourth orders (or
hands, as the Venetians call them) of electors, by which means you have
the four-and-twenty electors divided according to the four copies of the
same list, by six, into four hands or orders; and every one of these
orders names one competitor to every magistracy in the list; that is to
say, the first elector names to the first magistracy, the second elector
to the second magistracy, and so forth. But though the electors, as has
been shown, are chosen by mere lot, yet the competitors by them named are
not chosen by any lot, but by the suffrage of the whole order for example,
the first elector in the first order proposes a name to be strategus,
which name is balloted by himself and the other five electors, and if the
name so balloted attain not to above half the suffrages, it is laid aside,
and the first elector names another to the same magistracy and so in case
this also fails, another, till one he has named, whether it be himself, or
some other, has attained to above half the suffrages in the affirmative;
and the name so attaining to above half the suffrages in the affirmative
is written to the first magistracy in the list by the secretary which
being done, the second elector of the first order, names to 'the second
magistracy till one of his nomination be chosen to the same. The like is
done by the rest of the electors of the first order, till one competitor
be chosen, and written to every magistracy in their list. Now the second,
third, and fourth orders of electors doing exactly after the same manner,
it comes to pass that one competitor to every magistracy being chosen in
each order, there be in all four competitors chosen to every magistracy.

If any controversy arises in an order of electors, one of the censors
(these being at this game the groom-porters) is advertised by the
secretary who brings him in, and the electors disputing are bound to
acquiesce in his sentence. For which cause it is that the censors do not
ballot at the urns; the signory also abstains, lest it should deform the
house: wherefore the blanks in the side urns are by so many the fewer. And
so much for the lot, which is of the greater art but less consequence,
because it concerns proposition only: but all (except the tribunes and the
judges, which being but assistants have no suffrage) are to ballot at the
result, to which I now come.

The four orders of electors having perfected their lists, the face of
the house is changed: for the urns are taken away, and every senator and
magistrate is seated in his proper place, saving the electors, who, having
given their suffrages already, may not stir out of their chambers till the
house have given theirs, and the rest of the ballot be performed; which
follows in this manner:

The four lists being presented by the secretaries of each council of
electors to the signory, are first read, according to their order, to the
house, with an audible voice; and then the competitors are put to the
ballot or suffrage of the whole Senate in this manner: A, A named to be
strategus in the first order, whereupon eight ballotins, or pages, such as
are expressed by the figures f, f, take eight of the boxes represented,
though rudely, by the figures g, g, and go four on the one and four on the
other side of the house, that is, one to every bench, signifying "A,
A named to be the strategus in the first order.." and every
magistrate or senator (beginning by the strategus and the orator first)
holds up a little pellet of linen, as the box passes, between his finger
and his thumb, that men may see he has but one, and then puts it into the
same. The box consisting in the inner part of two boxes, being painted on
the outside white and green, to distinguish the affirmative from the
negative side, is so made that when your hand is in it, no man can see to
which of the sides you put the suffrage, nor hear to which it falls,
because the pellet being linen, makes no noise. The strategus and the
orator having begun, all the rest do the like.

The ballotins having thus gathered the suffrages, bring them before the
signory, in whose presence the outward boxes being opened, they take out
the inner boxes, whereof the affirmative is white, and the negative green,
and pour the white in the bowl N on the right hand, which is white also,
and the green into the bowl N on the left, which is also green. These
bowls or basins (better represented at the lower end of the figure by h,
i) being upon this occasion set before the tables of the secretaries at
the upper end N, N, the white on the right hand, and the green on the
left, the secretaries on each side number the balls, by which, if they
find that the affirmatives amount not to above one-half, they write not
the name that was balloted, but if they amount to above one-half, they
write it, adding the number of above half the suffrages to which it
attained. The first name being written, or laid aside, the next that is
put is BB named to be strategus in the second order; the third CC, named
to be strategus in the third order; the fourth DD, named to be strategus
in the fourth order and he of these four competitors that has most above
half in the affirmative, is the magistrate; or if none of them attain to
above half, the nomination for that magistracy is to be repeated by such
new electors as shall be chosen at the next ballot. And so, as is
exemplified in the first magistracy, proceeds the ballot of the rest;
first in the first, then in the second, and so in the third and fourth
orders.

Now whereas it may happen that AA, for example, being named strategus in
the first order, may also be named to the same or some one or more other
magistracies in one or more of the other orders; his name is first
balloted where it is first written, that is to the more worthy magistracy,
whereof if he misses, he is balloted as it comes in course for the next,
and so for the rest, if he misses of that, as often as he is named.

And because to be named twice, or oftener, whether to the same or some
other magistracy, is the stronger recommendation, the note must not fail
to be given upon the name, at the proposition in this manner: AA named to
be strategus in the first, and in the second order, or AA named to be
strategus in the first and the third, in the first and the fourth, etc.
But if he be named to the same magistracy in the first, second, third, and
fourth orders, he can have no competitor; wherefore attaining to above
half the suffrages, he is the magistrate. Or thus: AA named to be
strategus in the first, to be censor in the second, to be orator in the
third, and to be commissioner of the seal in the fourth order, or the like
in more or fewer orders, in which cases if he misses of the first
magistracy, he is balloted to the second; if he misses of the second, to
the third; and if he misses of the third, to the fourth.

The ballot not finished before sunset, though the election of the
magistrates already chosen be good, voids the election of such competitors
as being chosen are not yet furnished with magistracies, as if they had
never been named (for this is no juggling-box, but an art that must see
the sun), and the ballot for the remaining magistracies is to be repeated
the next day by new orders of electors, and such competitors as by them
shall be elected. And so in the like manner, if of all the names proposed
to the same magistracy, no one of them attains to above half the suffrages
in the affirmative.

The senatorian ballot of Oceana being thus described, those of the
parish, of the hundred, and of the tribe, being so little different, that
in this they are all contained, and by this may be easily understood, are
yet fully described, and made plain enough before in the fifth, sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth orders.

This, therefore, is the general order, whence those branches of the
ballot, some whereof you have already seen, are derived; which, with those
that follow, were all read and debated in this place at the institution.
When my Lord Epimonus de Garrula, being one of the councillors, and having
no further patience (though the rulers were composed by the agent of this
commonwealth, residing for that purpose at Venice) than to hear the
direction for the parishes, stood up and made way for himself in this
manner:

"MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HIGHNESS, MY LORD ARCHON:

"Under correction of Mr. Peregrin, Spy, our very learned agent and
intelligencer, I have seen the world a little, Venice, and (as gentlemen
are permitted to do) the great Council balloting. And truly I must needs
say, that it is for a dumb show the goodliest that I ever beheld with my
eyes. You should have some would take it ill, as if the noble Venetians
thought themselves too good to speak to strangers, but they observed them
not so narrowly. The truth is, they have nothing to say to their
acquaintance; or men that are in council sure would have tongues: for a
council, and not a word spoken in it, is a contradiction. But there is
such a pudder with their marching and countermarching, as, though never a
one of them draw a sword, you would think they were training; which till I
found that they did it only to entertain strangers, I came from among them
as wise as I went thither But in the Parliament of Oceana you had no balls
nor dancing, but sober conversation; a man might know and be known, show
his parts, and improve them. And now if you take the advice of this same
fellow, you will spoil all with his whimsies. Mr. Speaker -- cry you
mercy, my Lord Archon, I mean -- set the wisest man of your house in the
great Council of Venice, and you will not know him from a fool. Whereas
nothing is more certain than that flat and dull fellows in the judgment of
all such as used to keep company with them before, upon election into our
house, have immediately chitted like barley in the vat, where it acquires
a new spirit, and flowed forth into language, that I am as confident as I
am here, if there were not such as delight to abuse us, is far better than
Tully's; or, let anybody but translate one of his orations, and speak it
in the house, and see if everybody do not laugh at him.

"This is a great matter, Mr. Speaker; they do not cant it with your
book-learning, your orbs, your centres, your prime magnitudes, and your
nebulones, things I profess that would make a sober man run stark mad to
hear them; while we, who should be considering the honor of our country
and that it goes now or never upon our hand, whether it shall be
ridiculous to all the world, are going to nine-holes or trow madam for our
business, like your dumb Venetian, whom this same Sir Politic your
resident, that never saw him do anything but make faces, would insinuate
to you, at this distance, to have the only knack of state. Whereas if you
should take the pains, as I have done, to look a little nearer, you would
find these same wonderful things to be nothing else but mere natural
fopperies, or capriccios as they call them in Italian, even of the
meanest, of that nation. For, put the case you be travelling in Italy, ask
your contadino, that is, the next country-fellow you meet, some question,
and presently he ballots you an answer with a nod, which is affirmative;
or a shake with his head, which is the negative box; or a shrug with his
shoulder, which is the bossolo di non sinceri. Good! You will admire
Sandys for telling you, that grotta di cane is a miracle: and I shall be
laughed at, for assuring you, that it is nothing else but such a damp
(continued by the neighborhood of certain sulphur mines) as through
accidental heat does sometimes happen in our coalpits. But ingratitude
must not discourage an honest man from doing good. There is not, I say,
such a tongue-tied generation under heaven as your Italian, that you
should not wonder if he makes signs. But our people must have something in
their diurnals; we must ever and anon be telling them our minds; or if we
be at it when we raise taxes, like those gentlemen with the finger and the
thumb, they will swear that we are cutpurses. Come, I know what I have
heard them say, when some men had money that wrought hard enough for it;
and do you conceive they will be better pleased when they shall be told
that upon like occasions you are at mumchance or stool-ball?

"I do not speak for myself; for though I shall always
acknowledge that I got more by one year's sitting in the house than by my
three years' travels, it was not of that kind. But I hate that this same
Spy, for pretending to have played at billiards with the most serene
Commonwealth of Venice, should make such fools of us here, when I know
that he must have had his intelligence from some corn-cutter upon the
Rialto; for a noble Venetian would be hanged if he should keep such a
fellow company. And yet if I do not think he has made you all dote, never
trust me, my Lord Archon is sometimes in such strange raptures. Well, good
my lord, let me be heard as well as your apple squire. Venice has fresh
blood in her cheeks, I must confess, yet she is but an old lady. N or has
he picked her cabinet; these he sends you are none of her receipts, I can
assure you; he bought them for a Julio at St. Mark's of a mountebank. She
has no other wash, upon my knowledge, for that same envied complexion of
hers but her marshes, being a little better scented, saving your presence,
than a chamber-pot. My lords, I know what I say, but you will never have
done with it, that neither the great Turk, nor any of those little Turks
her neighbors, have been able to spoil her! Why you may as well wonder
that weasels do not suck eggs in swans' nests. Do you think that it has
lain in the devotion of her beads; which you that have puked so much at
popery, are now at length resolved shall consecrate M. Parson, and be
dropped by every one of his congregation, while those same whimsical
intelligences your surveyors (you will break my heart) give the turn to
your primum mobile! And so I think they will; for you will find that money
is the primum mobile) and they will turn you thus out of some £300,000
or £400,000: a pretty sum for urns and balls, for boxes and pills,
which these same quacksalvers are to administer to the parishes; and for
what disease I marvel! Or how does it work? Out comes a constable, an
overseer, and a churchwarden! Mr. Speaker, I am amazed!"

Never was there goose so stuck with lard as my Lord Epimonus's speech
with laughter, the Archon having much ado to recover himself in such a
manner as might enable him to return these thanks:

"In your whole lives, my lords, were you never entertained with so
much ingenuity, my Lord Epimonus having at once mended all the faults of
travellers. For, first, whereas they are abominable liars, he has not told
you (except some malicious body has misinformed him concerning poor Spy)
one syllable of falsehood. And, secondly, whereas they never fail to give
the upper hand in all their discourses to foreign nations, still jostling
their own into the kennel, he bears an honor to his country that will not
dissolve in Cephalonia, nor be corrupted with figs and melons, which I can
assure you is an ordinary obligation; and therefore hold it a matter of
public concern that we be to no occasion of quenching my lord's
affections, nor is there any such great matter between us, but, in my
opinion, might be easily reconciled, for though that which my lord gained
by sitting in the house, I steadfastly believe, as he can affirm, was got
fairly yet dare I not, nor do I think, that upon consideration he will
promise for other gamesters, especially when they were at it so high, as
he intimates not only to have been in use, but to be like enough to come
about again. Wherefore say I, let them throw with boxes, for unless we
will be below the politics of an ordinary, there is no such bar to
cogging. it is known to his lordship that our game is most at a throw, and
that every cast of our dice is in our suffrages, nor will he deny that
partiality in a suffrage is downright cogging.

If the Venetian boxes be the most sovereign of all remedies against this
same cogging, is it not a strange thing that they should be thrown first
into the fire by a fair gamester? Men are naturally subject to all kinds
of passions; some you have that are not able to withstand the brow of an
enemy, and others that make nothing of this, are less proof against that
of a friend. So that if your suffrage be barefaced, I dare say you shall
not have one fair cast in twenty. But whatever a man's fortune be at the
box, he neither knows whom to thank, nor whom to challenge. Wherefore
(that my lord may have a charitable opinion of the choice affection which
I confess to have, above all other beauties, for that of incomparable
Venice) there is in this way of suffrage no less than a demonstration that
it is the most pure, and the purity of the suffrage in a popular
government is the health, if not the life of it, seeing the soul is not
otherwise breathed into the sovereign power than by the suffrage of the
people. Wherefore no wonder if Postellus be of opinion that this use of
the ball is the very same with that of the bean in Athens, or that others,
by the text concerning Eldad and Medad, derive it from the Commonwealth of
Israel. There is another thing, though not so material to us, that my lord
will excuse me if I be not willing to yield, which is, that Venice
subsists only by her situation. it is true that a man in time of war may
be more secure from his enemies by being in a citadel, but not from his
diseases; wherefore the first cause, if he lives long, is his good
constitution, without which his citadel were to little purpose, and it is
not otherwise with Venice."

With this speech of the Archon I conclude the proof of the agrarian and
the ballot, being the fundamental laws of this commonwealth, and come now
from the centre to the circumferences or orbs, whereof some have been
already shown; as how the parishes annually pour themselves into the
hundreds, the hundreds into the tribes, and the tribes into the galaxies;
the annual galaxy of every tribe consisting of two knights and seven
deputies, whereof the knights constitute the Senate; the deputies, the
prerogative tribe, commonly called the people; and the Senate and people
constitute the sovereign power or Parliament of Oceana. Whereof to show
what the Parliament is, I must first open the Senate, and then the
prerogative tribe.

To begin with the Senate, of which (as a man is differently represented
by a picture drawer and by an anatomist) I shall first discover the face
or aspect, and then the parts, with the use of them. Every Monday morning
in the summer at seven, and in the winter at eight, the great bell in the
clock-house at the Pantheon begins, and continues ringing for the space of
one hour; in which time the magistrates of the Senate, being attended
according to their quality, with a respective number of the ballotins,
doorkeepers, and messengers, and having the ensigns of their magistracies
borne before them, as the sword before the strategus, the mace before the
orator, a mace with the seal before the commissioners of the chancery, the
like with the purse before the commissioners of the treasury, and a silver
wand, like those in use with the universities, before each of the censors,
being chancellors of the same. These, with the knights, in all 300,
assemble in the house or hall of the Senate.

The house or hall of the Senate being situated in the Pantheon or palace
of justice, is a room consisting of a square and a half. In the middle of
the lower end is the door, at the upper end hangs a rich state
overshadowing the greater part of a large throne, or half-pace of two
stages; the first ascended by two steps from the floor, and the second
about the middle rising two steps higher. Upon this stand two chairs, in
that on the right hand sits the strategus, in the other the orator adorned
with scarlet robes, after the fashion that was used by the dukes in the
aristocracy. At the right end of the upper stage stand three chairs, in
which the three commissioners of the seal are placed; and at the other end
sit the three commissioners of the treasury, every one in a robe or habit
like that of the earls. Of these magistrates of this upper stage consists
the signory. At either end of the lower stage stands a little table, to
which the secretaries of the Senate are set with their tufted sleeves in
the habit of civil lawyers. To the four steps, whereby the two stages of
the throne are ascended, answer four long benches, which successively
deriving from every one of the steps, continue their respective height,
and extend themselves by the side walls toward the lower end of the house,
every bench being divided by numeral characters into the thirty-seven
parts or places. Upon the upper benches sit the censors in the robes of
barons; the first in the middle of the right hand bench, and the second
directly opposite to him on the other side. Upon the rest of the benches
sit the knights, who, if they be called to the urns, distributing
themselves by the figures, come in equal files, either by the first seat,
which consists of the two upper benches on either side; or by the second
seat, consisting of the two lower benches on either side, beginning also
at the upper or at the lower ends of the same, according to the lot
whereby they are called; for which end the benches are open, and ascended
at either end with easy stairs and large passages.

The rest of the ballot is conformable to that of the tribe; the censors
of the house sitting at the side urn, and the youngest magistrate of the
signory at the middle, the urns being placed before the throne, and
prepared according to the number of the magistrates to be at that time
chosen by the rules already given to the censors of the tribes. But before
the benches of the knights on either side stands one being shorter, and at
the upper end of this sit the two tribunes of the horse. At the upper end
of the other the two tribunes of the foot in their arms, the rest of the
benches being covered by the judges of the land in their robes. But these
magistrates have no suffrage, nor the tribunes, though they derive their
presence in the Senate from the Romans, nor the judges, though they derive
theirs from the ancient Senate of Oceana. Every Monday this assembly sits
of course; at other times, if there be occasion, any magistrate of the
house, by giving order for the bell, or by his lictor or ensign-bearer,
calls a senate. And every magistrate or knight during his session has the
title, place, and honor of a duke, earl, baron, or knight respectively And
every one that has borne the same magistracy by his third session, has his
respective place and title during the term of his life, which is all the
honor conferred by this commonwealth, except upon the master of the
ceremonies, the master of the horse, and the king of the heralds, who are
knights by their places. And thus you have the face of the Senate, in
which there is scarce any feature that is not Roman or Venetian; nor do
the horns of the crescent extend themselves much unlike those of the
Sanhedrim, on either hand of the prince, and of the father of that Senate.
But upon beauty, in which every man has his fancy, we will not otherwise
philosophize than to remember that there is something more than decency in
the robe of a judge, that would not be well spared from the bench; and
that the gravest magistrate to whom you can commit the sword of justice,
will find a quickness in the spurs of honor, which, if they be not laid to
virtue, will lay themselves to that which may rout a commonwealth.

To come from the face of the Senate to the constitution and use of the
parts: it is contained in the peculiar orders. And the orders which are
peculiar to the Senate, are either of election or instruction.

Elections in the Senate are of three sorts: annual, biennial, and
extraordinary.

Annual elections are performed by the schedule called the tropic; and
the tropic consists of two parts: the one containing the magistrates, and
the other the councils to be yearly elected. The schedule or tropic of the
magistrates is as follows in --

The fifteenth order requiring, "That upon every Monday next ensuing
the last of March, the knights of the annual galaxies taking their places
in the Senate, be called the third region of the same; and that the house
having dismissed the first region, and received the third, proceed to
election of the magistrates contained in the first part of the tropic, by
the ensuing schedule:

The lord strategus, The lord orator, the first censor, The second
censor,

Annual magistrates,

The third commissioner of the seal,

The third commissioner of the Treasury,

Triennal magistrates.

"The annual magistrates (provided that no one man bears above one
of those honors during the term of one session) may be elected out of any
region. But the triennial magistrates may not be elected out of any other
than the third region only, lest the term of their session expire before
that of their honor; and (it being unlawful for a man to bear magistracy
any longer than he is thereto qualified by the election of the people)
cause a fraction in the rotation of this commonwealth.

"The strategus is first president of the Senate, and general of the
army, if it be commanded to march; in which case there shall be a second
strategus elected to be first president of the Senate, and general of the
second army, and if this also be commanded to march, a third strategus
shill be chosen, and so on, as long as the commonwealth sends forth
armies.

"The lord orator is the second and more peculiar president of the
Senate to whom it appertains to keep the house to orders.

"The censors, whereof the first, by consequence of his election, is
chancellor of the University of Clio, and the second of that of Calliope,
are presidents of the Council for Religion and magistrates, to whom it
belongs to keep the house to the order of the ballot. They are also
inquisitors into the ways and means of acquiring magistracy, and have
power to punish indirect proceedings in the same, by removing a knight or
magistrate out of the house, under appeal to the Senate.

"The commissioners of the seal being three, whereof the third is
annually chosen out of the third region, are judges in chancery.

"The commissioners of the Treasury being three, whereof the third
is annually chosen out of the third region, are judges in the exchequer,
and every magistrate of this schedule has right to propose to the Senate.

"But the strategus with the six commissioners is the
signory of this commonwealth, having right of session and suffrage in
every council of the Senate, and power either jointly or severally to
propose in all or any of them."

I have little in this order to observe and prove but that the strategus
is the same honor both in name and thing that was borne, among others, by
Philopemen and Aratus in the Commonwealth of the Achaeans; the like having
been in use also with the AEtolians. The orator, called otherwise the
speaker, is, with small alteration, the same that had been of former use
in this nation. These two, if you will, may be compared to the consuls in
Rome, or the suffetes in Carthage, for their magistracy is scarce
different.

The censors derive their power of removing a senator from those of Rome,
the government of the ballot from those of Venice, and that of
animadversion upon the ambitus, or canvass for magistracy, from both.

The signory, with the whole right and use of that magistracy to be
hereafter more fully explained, is almost purely Venetian.

The second part of the tropic is directed by --

The sixteenth order" Whereby the constitution of the councils being
four; that is to say, the Council of State, the Council of War, the
Council of Religion, and the Council of Trade, is rendered conformable in
their revolutions to that of the Senate. As: First, by the annual election
of five knights out of the first region of the Senate into the Council of
State, consisting of fifteen knights, five in every region. Secondly, by
the annual election of three knights out of the third region of the
Council of State, to be proposed by the provosts, and elected by that
council, into the Council of War, consisting of nine knights, three in
every region, not excluded by this election from remaining members also of
the Council of State. The four tribunes of the people have right of
session and suffrage in the Council of War. Thirdly, by the annual
election of four knights out of the third region of the Senate into the
Council of Religion, consisting of twelve knights, four in every region;
of this council the censors are presidents. Fourthly, by the annual
election of four knights out of the third region of the Senate into the
Council of Trade, consisting of twelve knights, four in every region. And
each region, in every one of these councils thus constituted, shall weekly
and interchangeably elect one provost whose magistracy shall continue for
one week; nor shall he be re-elected into the same till every knight of
that region in the same council has once borne the same magistracy. And
the provosts being one in every region, three in every council, and twelve
in all, beside their other capacities, shall assemble and be a council, or
rather an Academy apart, to certain ends and purposes to be hereafter
further explained with those of the rest of the councils."

This order is of no other use than the frame and turn of the councils,
and yet of no small one; for in motion consists life, and the motion of a
commonwealth will never be current unless it be circular. Men that, like
my Lord Epimonus, not enduring the resemblance of this kind of government
to orbs and spheres, fall on physicking and purging it, do no more than is
necessary; for if it be not in rotation both as to persons and things, it
will be very sick. The people of Rome, as to persons, if they had not been
taken up by the wheel of magistracy, had overturned the chariot of the
Senate. And those of Lacedaemon, as to things, had not been so quiet when
the Senate trashed their business, by encroaching upon the result, if by
the institution of the ephors they had not brought it about again. So that
if you allow not a commonwealth her rotation, in which consists her
equality, you reduce her to a party, and then it is necessary that you be
physicians indeed, or rather farriers; for you will have strong patients,
and such as must be haltered and cast, or yourselves may need
bone-setters. Wherefore the councils of this commonwealth, both in regard
of their elections, and, as will be shown, of their affairs, are uniform
with the Senate in their revolutions; not as whirlpits to swallow, but to
bite, and with the screws of their rotation to hold and turn a business
(like the vice of a smith) to the hand of the workman. Without engines of
which nature it is not possible for the Senate, much less for the people,
to be perfect artificers in a political capacity. But I shall not hold you
longer from --

The seventeenth order, "Directing biennial elections, or the
constitution of the orb of ambassador-in-ordinary, consisting of four
residences, the revolution whereof is performed in eight years, and
preserved through the election of one ambassador in two years by the
ballot of the Senate to repair to the Court of France, and reside there
for the term of two years; and the term of two years being expired, to
remove from thence to the Court of Spain, there to continue for the space
of two years, and thence to remove to the State of Venice, and after two
years' residence in that city to conclude with his residence at
Constantinople for a like term of time, and so to return. A knight of the
Senate, or a deputy of the prerogative, may not be elected
ambassador-in-ordinary, because a knight or deputy so chosen must either
lose his session, which would cause au unevenness in the motion of this
commonwealth, or accumulate magistracy, which agrees not with equality of
the same. Nor may any man be elected into this capacity that is above
five-and-thirty years of age, lest the commonwealth lose the charge of his
education, by being deprived at his return of the fruit of it, or else
enjoy it not long through the defects of nature."

This order is the perspective of the commonwealth, whereby she foresees
danger; or the traffic, whereby she receives every two years the return of
a statesman enriched with eight years' experience from the prime marts of
negotiation in Europe. And so much for the elections in the Senate that
are ordinary; such as are extraordinary follow in --

The eighteenth order, "Appointing all elections upon emergent
occasions, except that of the dictator, to be made by the scrutiny, or
that kind of election whereby a council comes to be a fifth order of
electors. For example, if there be occasion of an
ambassador-extraordinary, the provosts of the Council of State, or any two
of them, shall propose to the same, till one competitor be chosen by that
council; and the council having chosen a competitor, shall bring his name
into the Senate, which in the usual way shall choose four more competitors
to the same magistracy; and put them, with the competitor of the council,
to the ballot of the house, by which he of the five that is chosen is said
to be elected by the scrutiny of the Council of State. A vice-admiral, a
polemarch, or field officer, shall be elected after the same manner, by
the scrutiny of the Council of War. A judge or sergeant-at-law, by the
scrutiny of the commissioners of the seal. A baron, or considerable
officer of the Exchequer, by the scrutiny of the commissioners of the
Treasury: Men in magistracy, or out of it, are equally capable of election
by the scrutiny; but a magistrate or officer elected by the scrutiny to a
military employment, if he be neither a knight of the Senate nor a deputy
of the prerogative, ought to have his office confirmed by the prerogative,
because the militia in a commonwealth, where the people are sovereign, is
not lawful to be touched injussu populi.

The Romans were so curious that, though their consuls were elected in
the centuriate assemblies, they might not touch the militia, except they
were confirmed in the parochial assemblies; for a magistrate not receiving
his power from the people, takes it from them, and to take away their
power is to take away their liberty. As to the election by the scrutiny,
it is easily perceived to be Venetian, there being no such way to take in
the knowledge; which in all reason must be best in every council of such
men as are most fit for their turns, and yet to keep them from the bias of
particular affection or interest under that pretence; for the cause why
the great Council in Venice scarce ever elects any other than the name
that is brought in by the scrutiny, is very probable to be, that they
may... This election is the last of those appertaining to the Senate. The
councils being chosen by the orders already shown, it remains that we come
to those whereby they are instructed and the orders of instruction to the
councils are two: the first for the matter whereupon they are to proceed,
and the second for the manner of their proceeding. The matter of the
councils is distributed to them by --

The nineteenth order "Distributing to every council such businesses
as are properly to belong to their cognizance, whereof some they shall
receive and determine, and others they shall receive, prepare, and
introduce into the house: as, first,

"The Council of State is to receive all addresses, intelligences,
and letters of negotiation; to give audience to ambassadors sent to, and
to draw up instructions for such as shall be sent by, this commonwealth;
to receive propositions from, and hold intelligence with, the provincial
councils; to consider upon all laws to be enacted, amended, or repealed,
and upon all levies of men or money, war or peace, leagues or associations
to be made by this commonwealth, so far forth as is conducible to the
orderly preparation of the same to be introduced by them into the Senate;
provided, that all such affairs, as otherwise appertaining to the Council
of State, are, for the good of the commonwealth, to be carried with
greater secrecy, be managed by the Council of War, with power to receive
and send forth agents, spies, emissaries, intelligencers, frigots, and to
manage affairs of that nature, if it be necessary without communication to
the Senate, till such time as it may be had without detriment to the
business. But they shall have no power to engage the commonwealth in a war
without the consent of the Senate and the people. It appertains also to
this council to take charge of the fleet as admiral, and of all
storehouses, armories, arsenals, and magazines appertaining to this
commonwealth. They shall keep a diligent record of the military
expeditions from time to time reported by him that was strategus or
general, or one of the polemarchs in that action; or at least so far as
the experience of such commanders may tend to the improvement of the
military discipline, which they shall digest and introduce into the
Senate; and if the Senate shall thereupon frame any article, they shall
see that it be observed, in the musters or education of the youth. And
whereas the Council of War is the sentinel or scout of this commonwealth,
if any person or persons shall go about to introduce debate into any
popular assembly of the same, or otherwise to alter the present
government, or strike at the root of it, they shall apprehend, or cause to
be apprehended, seized, imprisoned, and examine, arraign, acquit, or
condemn, and cause to be executed any such person or persons, by their
proper power and authority and without appeal.

The Council of Religion, as the arbiter of this commonwealth in cases of
conscience more peculiarly appertaining to religion, Christian charity,
and a pious life, shall have the care of the national religion, and the
protection of the liberty of conscience with the cognizance of all causes
relating to either of them. And first as to the national religion: they
shall cause all places or preferments of the best revenue in either of the
universities to be conferred upon no other than such of the most learned
and pious men as have dedicated themselves to the study of theology. They
shall also take a special care that, by such augmentations as be or shall
hereafter be appointed by the Senate, every benefice in this nation be
improved at least to the value of £100 a year. And to the end that
there be no interest at all, whereby the divines or teachers of the
national religion may be corrupted, or corrupt religion, they shall be
capable of no other kind of employment or preferment in this commonwealth.
And whereas a directory for the administration of the national religion is
to be prepared by this council, they shall in this and other debates of
this nature proceed in manner following: a question arising in matter of
religion shall be put and stated by the council in writing, which writing
the censors shall send by their beadles (being proctors chosen to attend
them) each to the university whereof he is chancellor, and the
vice-chancellor of the same receiving the writing, shall call a
convocation of all the divines of that university being above forty years
of age. And the universities, upon a point so proposed, shall have no
manner of intelligence or correspondence one with another, till their
debates be ended, and they have made return of their answers to the
Council of Religion by two or three of their own members, that they may
clear their sense, if any doubt should arise, to the council, which done,
they shall return, and the council, having received such information,
shall proceed according to their own judgments, in the preparation of the
whole matter for the Senate: that so the interest of the learned being
removed, there may be a right application of reason to Scripture, which is
the foundation of the national religion.

"Secondly, this council, as to the protection of the liberty of
conscience, shall suffer no coercive power in the matter of religion to be
exercised in this nation; the teachers of the natural religion being no
other than such as voluntarily undertake that calling, and their auditors
or hearers no other than are also voluntary. Nor shall any gathered
congregation be molested or interrupted in their way of worship (being
neither Jewish nor idolatrous), but vigilantly and vigorously protected
and defended in the enjoyment, practice, and profession of the same. And
if there be officers or auditors appointed by any such congregation for
the introduction of causes into the Council of Religion, all such causes
so introduced shall be received, heard, and determined by the same, with
recourse had, if need be, to the Senate.

"Thirdly, every petition addressed to the Senate, except that of a
tribe, shall be received, examined, and debated by this council; and such
only as they, upon such examination and debate had, shall think fit, may
be introduced into the Senate.

"The Council of Trade being the vena porta of this nation, shall
hereafter receive instructions more at large. For the present, their
experience, attaining to a right understanding of those trades and
mysteries that feed the veins of this commonwealth, and a true distinction
of them from those that suck or exhaust the same, they shall acquaint the
Senate with the conveniences and inconveniences, to the end that
encouragement may be applied to the one, and remedy to the other.

"The Academy of the provosts, being the affability of the
commonwealth, shall assemble every day toward the evening in a fair room,
having certain withdrawing-rooms thereto belonging; and all sorts of
company that will repair thither for conversation or discourse, so it be
upon matters of government, news, or intelligence, or to propose anything
to the councils, shall be freely and affably received in the outer
chamber, and heard in the way of civil conversation, which is to be
managed without any other awe or ceremony than is thereto usually
appertaining, to the end that every man may be free, and that what is
proposed by one, may be argued or discoursed by the rest, except the
matter be of secrecy; in which case the provosts, or some of them, shall
take such as desire audience into one of the withdrawing-rooms. And the
provosts are to give their minds that this academy be so governed,
adorned, and preserved, as may be most attractive to men of parts and good
affections to the commonwealth, for the excellency of the conversation.

"Furthermore, if any man, not being able or willing to come in
person, has any advice to give which he judges may be for the good of the
commonwealth, he may write his mind to the Academy of the provosts, in a
letter signed or not signed, which letter shall be left with the
doorkeeper of the Academy. Nor shall any person delivering such a letter
be seized, molested, or detained, though it should prove to be a libel.
But the letters so delivered shall be presented to the provosts; and in
case they be so many that they cannot well be perused by the provosts
themselves, they shall distribute them as they please to be read by the
gentlemen of the Academy, who, finding anything in them material, will
find matter of discourse; or if they happen upon a business that requires
privacy, return it with a note upon it to a provost. And the provosts by
the secretaries attending shall cause such notes out of discourses or
letters to be taken as they please, to the end that they may propose, as
occasion serves, what any two of them shall think fit out of their notes
so taken to their respective councils; to the end that not only the ear of
the commonwealth be open to all, but that men of such education being in
her eve, she may upon emergent elections or occasions be always provided
of her choice of fit persons.

"Every council being adorned with a state for the signory, shall be
attended by two secretaries, two doorkeepers, and two
messengers-in-ordinary, and have power to command more upon emergencies,
as occasion requires. And the Academy shall be attended with two
secretaries, two messengers, and two doorkeepers; this with the other
councils being provided with their further conveniences at the charge of
the State.

"But whereas it is incident to commonwealths, upon emergencies
requiring extraordinary speed or secrecy, either through their natural
delays or unnatural haste, to incur equal danger, while holding to the
slow pace of their orders, they come not in time to defend themselves from
some sudden blow; or breaking them for the greater speed, they but haste
to their own destruction; if the Senate shall at any time make election of
nine knights-extraordinary, to be added to the Council of War, as a juncta
for the term of three months, the Council of War with the juncta so added,
is for the term of the same Dictator of Oceana, having power to levy men
and money, to make war and peace, as also to enact laws, which shall be
good for the space of one year (if they be not sooner repealed by the
Senate and the people) and for no longer time, except they be confirmed by
the Senate and the people. And the whole administration of the
commonwealth for the term of the said three months shall be in the
Dictator, provided that the Dictator shall have no power to do anything
that tends not to his proper end and institution, but all to the
preservation of the commonwealth as it is established, and for the sudden
restitution of the same to the natural channel and common course of
government. And all acts, orders, decrees, or laws of the Council of War
with the junota being thus created, shall be signed,

"DICTATOR OCEANAE."

This order of instructions to the councils being (as in a matter of that
nature is requisite) very large, I have used my best skill to abbreviate
it in such manner as might show no more of it than is necessary to the
understanding of the whole, though as to the parts, or further duties of
the councils, I have omitted many things of singular use in a
commonwealth. But it was discoursed at the council by the Archon in this
manner:

"MY LORDS, THE LEGISLATORS:

"Your councils, except the Dictator only, are proper and native
springs and sources, you see, which (hanging a few sticks and straws,
that, as less considerable, would otherwise be more troublesome, upon the
banks of their peculiar channels) derive the full stream of business into
the Senate, so pure, and so far from the possibility of being troubled or
stained (as will Undeniably appear by the course contained in the ensuing
order) with any kind of private interest or partiality, that it shall
never be possible for any assembly hearkening to the advice or information
of this or that worthy member (either instructed upon his pillow, or while
he was making himself ready, or by the petition or ticket which he
received at the door) to have half the security in his faith, or advantage
by his wisdom; such a Senate or council being, through the uncertainty of
the winds, like a wave of the sea. Nor shall it otherwise mend the matter
by flowing up into dry ditches, or referring businesses to be better
examined by committees, than to go further about with it to less purpose;
if it does not ebb back again with the more mud in it. For in a case
referred to an occasional committee, of which any member that is desirous
may get himself named, and to which nobody will come but either for the
sake of his friend or his own interest; it fares little better as to the
information of the Senate, than if it had been referred to the parties.
Wherefore the Athenians being distributed into four tribes, out of which
by equal numbers they annually chose 400 men, called the Senate of the
Bean, because the ballot at their election was performed by the use of
beans, divided them by fifties into eight parts. And every fifty in their
turn, for one-eighth part of the year, was a council apart called the
Prytans.

"The Prytans in their distinct council receiving all comers, and
giving ear to every man that had anything to propose concerning the
commonwealth, had power to debate and prepare all the businesses that were
to be introduced into the Senate. The Achaeans had ten selected
magistrates called the demiurgs, constituting a council apart called the
synarchy, which, with the strategus, prepared all the business that was
introduced into their Senate. But both the Senate of the Athenians, and
that of the Achaeans, would have wondered if a man had told them that they
were to receive all comers and discourses, to the end that they might
refer them afterward to the Prytans or the synarchy, much less to an
occasional committee, exposed to the catch that catch may of the parties
interested. And yet Venice in this, as in most of her orders, excels them
all by the constitution of her councils, that of the College, and the
other of the Dieci, or Council of Ten. The course of the College is
exactly described in the ensuing order: and for that of the Dieci, it so
little differs from what it has bestowed upon Our Dictator, that I need
not make any particular description of it. But to dictatorian power in
general, and the use of it (because it must needs be of difficult
digestion to such as, puking still at ancient prudence, show themselves to
be in the nursery of mother-wit); it is no less than necessary to say
something. And, first, in a commonwealth that is not wrought up, or
perfected, this power will be of very frequent, if not continual, use;
wherefore it is said more than once, upon defects of the government, in
the book of Judges, 'that in those days there was no king in Israel.' Nor
has the translator, though for 'no king, he should have said 'no judge,'
abused you so much; seeing that the Dictator (and such was the Judge of
Israel) or the dictatorian power being in a single person, so little
differs from monarchy, which followed in that, that from the same cause
there has been no other effect in any commonwealth: as in Rome was
manifest by Sylla and Caesar, who to make themselves absolute or
sovereign, had no more to do than to prolong their magistracy, for the
dictatorian power was reputed divine, and therefore irresistible.

"Nevertheless, so it is, that without this power, which is so
dangerous, and subject to introduce monarchy, a commonwealth cannot be
safe from falling into the like dissolution; unless you have an expedient
in this case of your own, and bound up by your providence from recoiling.
Expedients in some cases you must not only have, but be beholden for them
to such whom you must trust at a pinch, when you have not leisure to stand
with them for security; which will be a thousand times more dangerous. And
there can never be a commonwealth otherwise than by the order in debate
wrought up to that perfection; but this necessity must sometimes happen in
regard of her natural slowness and openness, and the suddenness of
assaults that may be made upon her, as also the secrecy which in some
cases may be of absolute necessity to her affairs. Whence Machiavel
concludes it positively, that a commonwealth unprovided of such a refuge,
must fall to ruin; for her course is either broken by the blow in one of
those cases, or by herself, while it startles her out of her orders. And
indeed a commonwealth is like a greyhound, which, having once coasted,
will never after run fair, but grow slothful; and when it comes to make a
common practice of taking nearer ways than its orders, it is dissolved:
for the being of a commonwealth consists in its orders. Wherefore at this
list you will be exposed to danger, if you have not provided beforehand
for the safety of your resort in the like cases: nor is it sufficient that
your resort be safe, unless it be as secret and quick; for if it be slow
or open, your former inconveniences are not remedied.

"Now for our imitation in this part, there is nothing in
experience like that of the Council of Ten in Venice; the benefit whereof
would be too long to be shown in the whole piece, and therefore I shall
take but a pattern out of Janotti. In the war, says he, which the
Venetians had with Florence in Casentin, the Florentines, finding a
necessity in their affairs far from any other inclination in themselves to
ask their peace, sent ambassadors about it to Venice, where they were no
sooner heard, than the bargain was struck up by the Council of Ten: and
everybody admiring (seeing this commonwealth stood upon the higher ground)
what should be the reason of such haste, the council upon the return of
the ambassadors imparted letters to the Senate, whereby it appeared that
the Turks had newly launched a formidable fleet against their State,
which, had it been understood by the Florentines, it was well enough known
they would have made no peace. Wherefore the service of the Ten was highly
applauded by the Senate, and celebrated by the Venetians. Whereby may
appear not only in part what use there is of dictatorian power in that
government, but that it is assumed at the discretion of that Council;
whereas in this of Oceana it is not otherwise intrusted than when the
Senate, in the election of nine knights-extraordinary, gives at once the
commission, and takes security in a balance, added to the Council of War,
though securer before by the tribunes of the people than that of Venice,
which yet never incurred jealousy; for if the younger nobility have been
often girding at it, that happened not so much through the apprehension of
danger in it to the commonwealth, as through the awe of it upon
themselves. Wherefore the graver have doubtlessly shown their prudence in
the law whereby the magistracy of these councillors being to last till'
their successors be created, the council is established."

The instructions of the councils for their matter being shown, it
remains that I show the instructions for the manner of their proceeding,
as they follow in --

The twentieth order, "Containing the method of debates to be
observed by the magistrates and the councils successively in order to a
decree of the Senate.

"The magistrates of the signory, as councillors of this
commonwealth, shall take into their consideration all matters of state or
of government; and, having right to propose in any council, may, any one
or more of them, propose what business he or they please in that council
to which it most properly belongs. And, that the councils may be held to
their duty, the said magistrates are superintendents and inspectors of the
same, with right to propose to the Senate.

"The censors have equal power with these magistrates, but in
relation to the Council of Religion only.

"Any two of the three provosts in every council may propose to, and
are the more peculiar proposers of, the same council; to the end that
there be not only an inspection and superintendency of business in
general, but that every work be also committed to a peculiar hand.

"Any one or more of the magistrates, or any two of the provosts
respectively having proposed, the council shall debate the business so
proposed, to which they of the third region that are willing shall speak
first in their order; they of the second, next; and they of the first,
last; and the opinions of those that proposed or spoke, as they shall be
thought the most considerable by the council, shall be taken by the
secretary of the same in writing, and each of them signed with the name of
the author.

"The opinions being thus prepared, any magistrate of the signory,
the censors, or any two of the provosts of that council, upon this
occasion may assemble the Senate.

"The Senate being assembled, the opinions (for example, if they be
four) shall be read in their order, that is, according to the order or
dignity of the magistrates or councillors by which they were signed. And
being read, if any of the council introducing them will speak, they, as
best acquainted with the business, shall have precedence; and after them
the senators shall speak according to their regions, beginning by the
third first, and so continuing till every man that will has spoken; and
when the opinions have been sufficiently debated, they shall be put all
together to the ballot after this manner:

"Four secretaries, carrying each of them one of the
opinions in one hand, with a white box in the other, and each following
the other, according to the order of the opinions, shall present his box,
naming the author of his opinion to every senator; and one secretary or
ballotin with a green box shall follow the four white ones; and one
secretary or ballotin with a red box shall follow the green one; and every
senator shall put one ball into some one of these six boxes. The suffrage
being gathered and opened before the signory, if the red box or
non-sincere had above half the suffrages, the opinions shall be all cast
out, for the major part of the house is not clear in the business. If no
one of the four opinions had above half the suffrages in the affirmative,
that which had fewest shall be cast out, and the other three shall be
balloted again. If no one of the three had above half, that which had
fewest shall be cast out, and the other two shall ballot again. If neither
of the two had above half, that which had fewest shall be cast out, and
the remaining opinion shall be balloted again. And if the remaining
opinion has not above half, it shall also be cast out. But the first of
the opinions that arrives at most above half in the affirmative, is the
decree of the Senate. The opinions being all of them cast out by the
non-sincere, may be reviewed, if occasion permits, by the council, and
brought in again. If they be cast out by the negative, the case being of
advice only; the house approves not, and there is an end of it: the case
being necessary, and admitting delay, the council is to think again upon
the business, and to bring in new opinions; but the case being necessary,
and not admitting delay, the Senate immediately electing the juncta shall
create the Dictator. 'And let the Dictator,' as the Roman saying is, 'take
care that the commonwealth receives no harm.'"

This in case the debate concludes not in a decree. But if a decree be
passed, it is either in matter of state or government according to law
enacted already, and then it is good without going any further. or it is
in matter of law to be enacted, repealed, or amended; and then the decree
of the Senate, especially if it be for a war, or for a levy of men or
money, is invalid, without the result of the commonwealth, which is in the
prerogative tribe, or representative of the people.

"The Senate having prepared a decree to be proposed to the people,
shall appoint their proposers; and no other may propose for the Senate to
the people but the magistrates of the house; that is to say, the three
commissioners of the seal, or any two of them; the three of the Treasury,
or any two of them; or the two censors.

"The Senate having appointed their proposers, shall require of the
tribunes a muster of the people at a set time and place: and the tribunes
or any two of them having mustered the people accordingly, the proposers
shall propose the sense or decree of the Senate by clauses to the people.
And that which is proposed by the authority of the Senate, and resolved by
the command of the people, is the law of Oceana." To this order,
implicitly containing the sum very near of the whole civil part of the
commonwealth, my Lord Archon spoke thus in council:

"MY DEAR LORDS:

"There is a saying, that a man must cut his coat according to his
cloth. When I consider what God has allowed or furnished to our present
work, I am amazed. You would have a popular government; he has weighed it
to you in the present balance, as I may say, to a drachm; you have no more
to do but to fix it. For the superstructures of such a government they
require a good aristocracy: and you have, or have had a nobility or gentry
the best studied, and the best writers, at least next that of Italy, in
the whole world; nor have they been inferior, when so exercised, in the
leading of armies. But the people are the main body of a commonwealth;
show me from the treasuries of the snow (as it is in Job) to the burning
zone a people whose shoulder so universally and so exactly fits the
corselet. Nevertheless, it were convenient to be well provided with
auxiliaries. There is Marpesia, through her fruitfulness, inexhaustible of
men, and men through her barrenness not only enured to hardship, but in
your arms. It may be said that Venice, excepting only that she takes not
in the people, is the most incomparable situation of a commonwealth. You
are Venice, taking in your people and your auxiliaries too. My lords, the
children of Israel were makers of brick before they were builders of a
commonwealth; but our brick is made, our mortar tempered, the cedars of
Lebanon are hewed and squared to our hands. Has this been the work of man?
Or is it in man to withstand this work? 'Shall he that contends with the
Almighty instruct him? He that reproves God, let him answer it.' For our
parts, everything is so laid that when we come to have use of it, it is
the next at hand; and unless we can conceive that God and nature do
anything in vain, there is no more for us to do but to despatch. The piece
which we have reached to us in the foregoing orders, is the aristocracy.
Athens, as has been shown, was plainly lost through the want of a good
aristocracy.

"But the sufficiency of an aristocracy goes demonstrably upon the
hand of the nobility or gentry; for that the politics can be mastered
without study, or that the people can have leisure to study, is a vain
imagination; and what kind of aristocracy divines and lawyers would make,
let their incurable running upon their own narrow bias and their perpetual
invectives against Machiavel (though in some places justly reprovable, yet
the only politician, and incomparable patron of the people) serve for
instruction. I will stand no more to the judgment of lawyers and divines
in this work, than to that of so many other tradesmen; but if this model
chances to wander abroad, I recommend it to the Roman speculativi (the
most complete gentlemen of this age) for their censure; or with my Lord
Epimonus his leave, send 300 or 400 copies to your agent at Venice to be
presented to the magistrates there; and when they have considered them, to
be proposed to the debate of the Senate, the most competent judges under
heaven, who, though they have great affairs, will not refuse to return you
the oracle of their ballot. The councillors of princes I will not trust;
they are but journeymen. The wisdom of these later times in princes'
affairs (says Verulamius) is rather fine deliveries and shiftings of
dangers when they be near, than solid and grounded courses to keep them
off. Their councillors do not derive their proceedings from any sound root
of government that may contain the demonstration, and assure the success
of them, but are expedient-mongers, givers of themselves to help a lame
dog over a stile; else how comes it to pass that the fame of Cardinal
Richelieu has been like thunder, whereof we hear the noise, but can make
no demonstration of the reason? But to return: if neither the people, nor
divines and lawyers, can be the aristocracy of a nation, there remains
only the nobility; in which style, to avoid further repetition, I shall
understand the gentry also, as the French do by the word noblesse.

"Now to treat of the nobility in such sort as may be less obnoxious
to mistake, it will be convenient, and answerable to the present occasion,
that I divide my discourse into four parts:

"The first treating of nobility, and the kinds of it;

"The second, of their capacity of the Senate;

"The third. of the divers kinds of senates;

"The fourth, of the Senate, according to the foregoing orders.

"Nobility may be defined divers ways; for it is either ancient
riches, or ancient virtue, or a title conferred by a prince or a
commonwealth.

"Nobility of the first kind may be subdivided into two others, such
as hold an overbalance in dominion or property to the whole people, or
such as hold not an overbalance. in the former case, a nobility (such was
the Gothic, of which sufficient has been spoken) is incompatible with
popular government; for to popular government it is essential that power
should be in the people, but the overbalance of a nobility in dominion
draws the power to themselves. Wherefore in this sense it is that
Machiavel is to be understood, where he says, that these are pernicious in
a commonwealth; and of France, Spain, and Italy, that they are nations
which for this cause are the corruption of the world: for otherwise
nobility may, according to his definition (which is, 'that they are such
as live upon their own revenues in plenty, without engagement either to
the tilling of their lands, or other work for their livelihood '), hold an
underbalance to the people; in which case they are not only safe, but
necessary to the natural mixture of a well-ordered commonwealth.

"For how else can you have a commonwealth that is not altogether
mechanic? or what comparison is there of such commonwealths as are, or
come nearest to mechanic -- for example, Athens, Switzerland, Holland, to
Lacedaemon, Rome, and Venice, plumed with their aristocracies? Your
mechanics, till they have first feathered their nests, like the fowls of
the air whose whole employment is to seek their food, are so busied in
their private concernments that they have neither leisure to study the
public, nor are safely to be trusted with it, because a man is not
faithfully embarked in this kind of ship, if he has no share in the
freight. But if his share be such as gives him leisure by his private
advantage to reflect upon that of the public, what other name is there for
this sort of men, being a leur aise, but (as Machiavel you see calls them)
nobility? Especially when their families come to be such as are noted for
their services done to the commonwealth, and so take into their ancient
riches ancient virtue, which is the second definition of nobility, but
such a one as is scarce possible in nature without the former. 'For as the
baggage,' says Verulamius, 'is to an army, so are riches to virtue; they
cannot be spared nor left behind, though they be impediments, such as not
only hinder the march, but sometimes through the care of them lose or
disturb the victory.' Of this latter sort is the nobility of Oceana; the
best of all others because they, having no stamp whence to derive their
price, can have it no otherwise than by their intrinsic value. The third
definition of nobility, is a title, honor, or distinction from the people,
conferred or allowed by the prince or the commonwealth. And this may be
two ways, either without any stamp or privilege, as in Oceana; or with
such privileges as are inconsiderable, as in Athens after the battle of
Plataea, whence the nobility had no right, as such, but to religious
offices, or inspection of the public games, to which they were also to be
elected by the people; or with privileges, and those considerable ones, as
the nobility in Athens before the battle of Plataea, and the patricians in
Rome each of which had right, or claimed it, to the Senate and all the
magistracies; wherein for some time they only by their stamp were current.

"But to begin higher, and to speak more at large of nobility in
their several capacities of the Senate. The phylarchs, or princes of the
tribes of Israel, were the most renowned, or, as the Latin, the most noble
of the congregation, whereof by hereditary right they had the leading and
judging. The patriarchs, or princes of families, according as they
declared their pedigrees, had the like right as to their families; but
neither in these nor the former was there any hereditary right to the
Sanhedrim: though there be little question but the wise men and
understanding, and known among their tribes, which the people took or
elected into those or other magistracies, and whom Moses made rulers over
them, must have been of these, seeing they could not choose but be the
most known among the tribes, and were likeliest by the advantages of
education to be the most wise and understanding.

"Solon having found the Athenians neither locally nor
genealogically, but by their different ways of life, divided into four
tribes -- that is, into the soldiery, the tradesmen, the husbandmen, and
the goatherds -- instituted a new distribution of them, according to the
sense or valuation of their estates, into four classes: the first, second,
and third consisting of such as were proprietors in land, distinguished by
the rate of their freeholds, with that stamp upon them, which making them
capable of adding honor to their riches, that is to say, of the Senate,
and all the magistracies, excluded the fourth, being the body of the
people, and far greater in number than the former three, from all other
right, as to those capacities, except the election of these, who by this
means became an hereditary aristocracy or senatorian order of nobility.
This was that course which came afterward to be the destruction of Rome,
and had now ruined Athens. The nobility, according to the inevitable
nature of such a one, having laid the plot how to divest the people of the
result, and so to draw the whole power of the commonwealth to themselves;
which in all likelihood they had done, if the people, coming by mere
chance to be victorious in the battle of Plataea, and famous for defending
Greece against the Persians, had not returned with such courage as
irresistibly broke the classes, to which of old they had borne a white
tooth, brought the nobility to equal terms, and the Senate with the
magistracies to be common to both; the magistracies by suffrage, and the
Senate (which was the mischief of it, as I shall show anon in that
constitution) by lot only." The Lacedaemonians were in the manner,
and for the same cause with the Venetians at this day, no other than a
nobility even according to the definition given of nobility by Machiavel;
for they neither exercised any trade, nor labored their lands or lots,
which was done by their helots: wherefore some nobility may be far from
pernicious in a commonwealth by Machiavel's own testimony, who is an
admirer of this, though the servants thereof were more in number than the
citizens. To these servants I hold the answer of Lycurgus -- when he bade
him who asked why he did not admit the people to the government of his
commonwealth, to go home and admit his servants to the government of his
family-to relate: for neither were the Lacedaemonians servants, nor,
further, capable of the government, unless, whereas the congregation had
the result, be should have given them the debate also; every one of these
that attained to sixty years of age, and the major vote of the
congregation, being equally capable of the Senate.

"The nobility of Rome, and their capacity of the Senate, I have
already described by that of Athens before the battle of Plataea, saving
only that the Athenian was never eligible into the Senate without the
suffrage of the people till the introduction of the lot, but the Roman
nobility ever: for the patricians were elected into the Senate by the
kings; by the consuls, or the censors, or if a plebeian happened to be
conscribed, he and his posterity became patricians. Nor, though the people
had many disputes with the nobility, did this ever come in controversy,
which, if there had been nothing else, might in my judgment have been
enough to overturn that commonwealth.

"The Venetian nobility, but that they are richer, and not military,
resemble at all other points the Lacedaemonian, as I have already shown.
These Machiavel excepts from his rule, by saying that their estates are
rather personal than real, or of any great revenue in land, which comes to
our account, and shows that a nobility or party of the nobility, not
overbalancing in dominion, is not dangerous, but of necessary use in every
commonwealth, provided it be rightly ordered; for if it be so ordered as
was that of Rome, though they do not overbalance at the beginning, as they
did not there, it will not be long ere they do, as is clear both in reason
and experience toward the latter end. That the nobility only be capable of
the Senate is there only not dangerous, where there be no other citizens,
as in this government and that of Lacedaemon.

"The nobility of Holland and Switzerland, though but few, have
privileges not only distinct from the people, but so great that in some
sovereignties they have a negative voice; an example which I am far from
commending, being such as (if those governments were not cantonized,
divided, and subdivided into many petty sovereignties that balance one
another, and in which the nobility, except they had a prince at the head
of them, can never join to make work) would be the most dangerous that
ever was, but the Gothic, of which it favors. For in ancient commonwealths
you shall never find a nobility to have had a negative but by the poll,
which, the people being far more in number, came to nothing; whereas these
have it, be they never so few by their stamp or order.

"Ours of Oceana have nothing else but their education and their
leisure for the public, furnished by their ease and competent riches: and
their intrinsic value, which, according as it comes to hold weight in the
judgment or suffrage of the people, is their only way to honor and
preferment. Wherefore I would have your lordships to look upon your
children as such, who, if they come to shake off some part of their
baggage, shall make the more quick and glorious march; for it was nothing
else but the baggage, sordidly plundered by the nobility of Rome, that
lost the victory of the whole world in the midst of her triumph.

"Having followed the nobility thus close, they bring us, according
to their natural course and divers kinds, to the divers constitutions of
the Senate.

"That of Israel (as was shown by my right noble Lord Phosphorus de
Auge, in the opening of the commonwealth) consisted of seventy elders,
elected at first by the people. But whereas they were for life, they ever
after (though without any divine precept for it) substituted their
successors by ordination, which ceremony was most usually performed by
imposition of hands; and by this means a commonwealth of as popular
institution as can be found became, as it is accounted by Josephus,
aristocratical. From this ordination derives that which was introduced by
the Apostles into the Christian Church; for which cause I think it is that
the Presbyterians would have the government of the Church to be
aristocratical, though the Apostles, to the end, as I conceive, that they
might give no occasion to such a mistake, but show that they intended the
government of the Church to be popular, ordained elders, as has been
shown, by the holding up of hands (or free suffrage of the people) in
every congregation or ecclesia: for that is the word in the original,
being borrowed from the civil congregations of the people in Athens and
Lacedaemon, which were so called; and the word for holding up of hands in
the text is also the very same, which signified the suffrage of the people
in Athens, chiroton&&ante&; for the suffrage of the Athenians
was given per chirotonian, says Emmius.

"The Council of the Bean (as was shown by my Lord Navarchus de
Paralo in his full discourse), being the proposing Senate of Athens (for
that of the Areopagites was a judicatory), consisted of 400, some say 500
senators, elected annually, all at once, and by a mere lot without
suffrage. Wherefore though the Senate, to correct the temerity of the lot,
had power to cast out such as they should judge unworthy of that honor,
this related to manners only, and was not sufficient to repair the
commonwealth, which by such means became impotent; and forasmuch as her
Senate consisted not of the natural aristocracy, which in a commonwealth
is the only spur and rein of the people, it was cast headlong by the
rashness of her demagogues or grandees into ruin; while her Senate, like
the Roman tribunes (who almost always, instead of governing, were rather
governed by the multitude), proposed not to the result only, but to the
debate also of the people, who were therefore called to the pulpits, where
some vomited, and others drank, poison.

"The Senate of Lacedaemon, most truly discovered by my Lord Laco de
Scytale, consisted but of thirty for life, whereof the two kings, having
but single votes, were hereditary, the rest elected by the free suffrage
of the people, but out of such as were sixty years of age. These had the
whole debate of the commonwealth in themselves, and proposed to the result
only of the people. And now the riddle which I have heretofore found
troublesome to unfold, is out; that is to say, why Athens and Lacedaemon,
consisting each of the Senate and the people, the one should be held a
democracy, and the other an aristocracy, or laudable oligarchy, as it is
termed by Isocrates; for that word is not, wherever you meet it, to be
branded, Seeing it is used also by Aristotle, Plutarch, and others,
sometimes in a good sense. The main difference was that the people in this
had the result only, and in that the debate and result, too. But for my
part, where the people have the election of the Senate, not bound to a
distinct order, and the result, which is the sovereign power, I hold them
to have that share in the government (the Senate being not for life)
whereof, with the safety of the commonwealth, they are capable in nature,
and such a government, for that cause, to be democracy; though I do not
deny but in Lacedaemon, the paucity of the senators considered, it might
be called oligarchy, in comparison of Athens; or, if we look on their
continuance for life, though they had been more, aristocracy.

"The Senate of Rome (whose fame has been heard to thunder in the
eloquence of my Lord Dolabella d'Enyo) consisting of 300, was, in regard
of the number, less oligarchical than that of Lacedaemon; but more in
regard of the patricians, who, having an hereditary capacity of the same,
were not elected to that honor by the people; but, being conscribed by the
censors, enjoyed it for life. Wherefore these, if they had their wills,
would have resolved as well as debated; which set the people at such
variance with them as dissolved the commonwealth; whereas if the people
had enjoyed the result, that about the agrarian, as well as all other
strife, must of necessity have ceased.

"The Senates of Switzerland and Holland (as I have learnt of my
Lords Alpester and Glaucus), being bound up (like the sheaf of arrows
which the latter gives) by leagues, lie like those in their quivers; but
arrows, when they come to be drawn, fly from this way and from that; and I
am contented that these concerned us not.

"That of Venice (by the faithful testimony of my most excellent
Lord Linceus de Stella) has obliged a world, sufficiently punished by its
own blindness and ingratitude, to repent and be wiser: for whereas a
commonwealth in which there is no senate, or where the senate is corrupt,
cannot stand, the great Council of Venice, like the statue of Nilus, leans
upon an urn or waterpot, which pours forth the Senate in so pure and
perpetual a stream, as being unable to stagnate, is forever incapable of
corruption. The fuller description of this Senate is contained in that of
Oceana; and that of Oceana in the foregoing orders. To every one of which,
because something has been already said, I shall not speak in particular.
But in general, your Senate, and the other assembly, or the prerogative,
as I shall show in due place, are perpetual, not as lakes or puddles, but
as the rivers of Eden; and are beds made, as you have seen, to receive the
whole people, by a due and faithful vicissitude, into their current. They
are not, as in the late way, alternate. Alternate life in government is
the alternate death of it.

"This was the Gothic work, whereby the former government (which was
not only a ship, but a gust, too) could never open her sails, but in
danger to overset herself, neither could make any voyage nor lie safe in
her own harbor. The wars of later ages, says Verulamius, seem to be made
in the dark, in respect of the glory and honor which reflected on men from
the wars in ancient times. Their shipping of this sort Was for voyages;
ours dare not launch, nor lies it safe at home. Your Gothic politicians
seem to me rather to have invented some new ammunition or gunpowder, in
their King and Parliament, than government. For what is become of the
princes (a kind of people) in Germany? -- blown up. Where are the estates,
or the power of the people in France? -- blown up. Where is that of the
people in Arragon, and the rest of the Spanish kingdoms? -- blown up. On
the other side, where is the King of Spain's power in Holland? -- blown
up. Where is that of the Austrian princes in Switzerland? -- blown up.
This perpetual peevishness and jealousy, under the alternate empire of the
prince and of the people, are obnoxious to every spark. Nor shall any man
show a reason that will be holding in prudence, why the people of Oceana
have blown up their King, but that their kings did not first blow up them.
The rest is discourse for ladies. Wherefore your parliaments are not
henceforth to come out of the bag of AEolus, but by your galaxies, to be
the perpetual food of the fire of Vesta.

"Your galaxies, which divide the house into so many regions, are
three; one of which constituting the third region is annually chosen, but
for the term of three years; which causes the house (having at once
blossoms, fruit half ripe, and others dropping off in full maturity) to
resemble an orange tree, such as is at the same time an education or
spring, and a harvest, too; for the people have made a very ill-choice in
the man, who is not easily capable of the perfect knowledge in one year of
the senatorian orders; which knowledge, allowing him for the first to have
been a novice, brings him the second year to practise, and time enough.
For at this rate you must always have 200 knowing men in the government.
And thus the vicissitude of your senators is not perceivable in the
steadiness and perpetuity of your Senate; which, like that of Venice,
being always changing, is forever the same. And though other politicians
have not so well imitated their patter, there is nothing more obvious in
nature, seeing a man who wears the same flesh but a short time, is
nevertheless the same man, and of the same genius; and whence is this but
from the constancy of nature, in holding a man to her orders? Wherefore
keep also to your orders. But this is a mean request; your orders will be
worth little if they do not hold you to them, wherefore embark. They are
like a ship, if you be once aboard, you do not carry them, but they you;
and see how Venice stands to her tackling: you will no more forsake them
than you will leap into the sea.

"But they are very many and difficult. O my Lords, what seaman
casts away his card because it has four-and-twenty points of the compass?
and yet those are very near as many and as difficult as the orders in the
whole circumference of your commonwealth. Consider, how have we been
tossed with every wind of doctrine, lost by the glib tongues of your
demagogues and grandees in our own havens? A company of fiddlers that have
disturbed your rest for your groat; £2,000 to one, £3,000 a year
to another, has been nothing. And for what? Is there one of them that yet
knows what a commonwealth is? And are you yet afraid of such a government
in which these shall not dare to scrape for fear of the statute?
Themistocles could not fiddle, but could make of a small city a great
commonwealth: these have fiddled, and for your money, till they have
brought a great commonwealth to a small city.

"It grieves me, while I consider how, and from what causes,
imaginary difficulties will be aggravated, that the foregoing orders are
not capable of any greater clearness in discourse or writing; but if a man
should make a book, describing every trick and passage, it would fare no
otherwise with a game at cards; and this is no more, if a man plays upon
the square. 'There is a great difference,' says Verulamius, 'between a
cunning man and a wise man (between a demagogue and a legislator), not
only in point of honesty, but in point of ability as there be that can
pack the cards, and yet cannot play well; so there be some that are good
in canvasses and fractions, that are otherwise weak men.' Allow me but
these orders, and let them come with their cards in their sleeves, or pack
if they can. 'Again,' says he, 'it is one thing to understand persons, and
another to understand matters; for many are perfect in men's humors that
are not greatly capable of the real part of business, which is the
constitution of one that has studied men more than books. But there is
nothing more hurtful in a State than that cunning men should pass for
wise.' His words are an oracle. As Dionysius, when he could no longer
exercise his tyranny among men, turned schoolmaster, that he might
exercise it among boys. Allow me but these orders, and your grandees, so
well skilled in the baits and palates of men, shall turn rat-catchers.

"And whereas 'councils (as is discreetly observed by the same
author in his time) are at this day, in most places, but familiar meetings
(somewhat like the Academy of our provosts), where matters are rather
talked on than debated, and run too swift to order an act of council,'
give me my orders, and see if I have not puzzled your demagogues.

"It is not so much my desire to return upon haunts, as
theirs that will not be satisfied; wherefore if, notwithstanding what was
said of dividing and choosing in our preliminary discourses, men will yet
be returning to the question, Why the Senate must be a council apart
(though even in Athens, where it was of no other constitution than the
popular assembly, the distinction of it from the other was never held less
than necessary) this may be added to the former reasons, that if the
aristocracy be not for the debate, it is for nothing; but if it be for
debate, it must have convenience for it; and what convenience is there for
debate in a crowd, where there is nothing but jostling, treading upon one
another, and stirring of blood, than which in this case there is nothing
more dangerous? Truly, it was not ill said of my Lord Epimonus, that
Venice plays her game, as it were, at billiards or nine-holes; and so may
your lordships, unless your ribs be so strong that you think better of
football: for such sport is debate in a popular assembly as,
notwithstanding the distinction of the Senate, was the destruction of
Athens."

This speech concluded the debate which happened at the institution of
the Senate. The next assembly is that of the people or prerogative tribe.

The face, or mien, of the prerogative tribe for the arms, the horses,
and the discipline, but more especially for the select men, is that of a
very noble regiment, or rather of two; the one of horse, divided into
three troops (besides that of the provinces, which will be shown
hereafter), with their captains, cornets, and two tribunes of the horse at
the head of them; the other of foot in three companies (beside that of the
provinces), with their captains, ensigns, and two tribunes of the foot at
the head of them. The first troop is called the Phoenix, the second the
Pelican, and the third the Swallow. The first company the Cypress, the
second the Myrtle, and the third the Spray. Of these again (not without a
near resemblance of the Roman division of a tribe) the Phoenix and the
Cypress constitute the first class, the Pelican and the Myrtle the second,
and the Swallow with the Spray the third, renewed every spring by --

The one-and-twentieth order, "Directing, that upon every Monday
next ensuing the last of March, the deputies of the annual galaxy arriving
at the pavilion in the halo, and electing one captain and one cornet of
the Swallow (triennial officers) by and out of the cavalry at the horse
urn, according to the rules contained in the ballot of the hundred; and
one captain with one ensign of the Spray (triennial officers) by and out
of the infantry at the foot urn, after the same way of balloting,
constitute and become the third classes of the prerogative tribe."

Seven deputies are annually returned by every tribe, whereof three are
horse and four are foot; and there be fifty tribes: so the Swallow must
consist of 150 horse, the Spray of 200 foot. And the rest of the classes
being two, each of them in number equal, the whole prerogative (beside the
provinces, that is, the knights and deputies of Marpesia and Panopea) must
consist of 1,050 deputies. And these troops and companies may as well be
called centuries as those of the Romans; for the Romans related not, in so
naming theirs, to the number. And whereas they were distributed according
to the valuation of their estates, so are these; which, by virtue of the
last order, are now accommodated with their triennial officers. But there
be others appertaining to this tribe whose election, being of far greater
importance, is annual, as follows in

The twenty-second order, "Whereby the first class having elected
their triennial officers, and made oath to the old tribunes, that they
will neither introduce, cause, nor to their power suffer debate to be
introduced into any popular assembly of this government, but to their
utmost be aiding and assisting to seize and deliver any person or persons
in that way offending, and striking at the root of this commonwealth, to
the Council of War, are to proceed with the other two classes of the
prerogative tribe to election of the new tribunes, being four annual
magistrates, whereof two are to be elected out of the cavalry at the horse
urn, and two out of the infantry at the foot urn, according to the common
ballot of the tribes. And they may be promiscuously chosen out of any
classes, provided that the same person shall not be capable of bearing the
tribunitian honor twice in the term of one galaxy. The tribunes thus
chosen shall receive the tribe (in reference to the power of mustering and
disciplining the same) as commanders-in-chief, and for the rest as
magistrates, whose proper function is prescribed by the next order. The
tribunes may give leave to any number of the prerogative, not exceeding
100 at a time, to be absent, so they be not magistrates nor officers, and
return within three months. If a magistrate or officer has a necessary
occasion, he may also be absent for the space of one month, provided that
there be not above three cornets or ensigns, two captains, or one tribune
so absent at one time."

To this the Archon spoke at the institution after this manner:

"MY LORDS:

"It is affirmed by Cicero, in his oration for Flaccus, that the
commonwealths of Greece were all shaken or ruined by the intemperance of
their Comitia, or assemblies of the people. The truth is, if good heed in
this point be not taken, a commonwealth will have bad legs. But all the
world knows he should have excepted Lacedaemon, where the people, as has
been shown by the oracle, had no power at all of debate, nor (till after
Lysander, whose avarice opened a gulf that was not long ere it swallowed
up his country) came it ever to be exercised by them. Whence that
commonwealth stood longest and firmest of any other but this, in our days,
of Venice; which, having underlaid herself with the like institution, owes
a great, if not the greater, part of her steadiness to the same principle;
the great Council, which is with her the people, by the authority of my
Lord Epimonus, never speaking a word. Nor shall any commonwealth, where
the people in their political capacity is talkative, ever see half the
days of one of these, but, being carried away by vainglorious men (that,
as Overbury says, void more than they drink), swim down the stream, as did
Athens, the most prating of these dames, when that same ranting fellow
Alcibiades fell a-demagoguing for the Silician War.

"But whereas debate, by the authority and experience of Lacedaemon
and Venice, is not to be committed to the people in a well-ordered
government, it may be said that the order specified is but a slight bar in
a matter of like danger; for so much as an oath, if there be no recourse
upon the breach of it, is a weak tie for such hands as have the sword in
them, wherefore what should hinder the people of Oceana, if they happen
not to regard an oath from assuming debate, and making themselves as much
an anarchy as those of Athens? To which I answer, Take the common sort in
a private capacity, and, except they be injured, you shall find them to
have a bashfulness in the presence of the better sort, or wiser men,
acknowledging their abilities by attention, and accounting it no mean
honor to receive respect from them; but if they be injured by them, they
hate them, and the more for being wise or great, because that makes it the
greater injury. Nor refrain they in this case from any kind of
intemperance of speech, if of action. It is no otherwise with a people in
their political capacity; you shall never find that they have assumed
debate for itself, but for something else. Wherefore in Lacedaemon where
there was, and in Venice where there is, nothing else for which they
should assume it, they have never shown so much as an inclination to it.

"Nor was there any appearance of such a desire in the people of
Rome (who from the time of Romulus had been very well contented with the
power of result either in the parochial assemblies, as it was settled upon
them by him, or in the meetings of the hundreds, as it was altered in
their regard for the worse by Servius Tullius) till news was brought, some
fifteen years after the exile of Tarquin, their late King (during which
time the Senate had governed pretty well), that he was dead at the Court
of Aristodemus the tyrant of Cumae. Whereupon the patricians, or nobility,
began to let out the hitherto dissembled venom which is inherent in the
root of oligarchy and fell immediately upon injuring the people beyond all
moderation. For whereas the people had served both gallantly and
contentedly in arms upon their own charges, and, though joint purchasers
by their swords of the conquered lands, had not participated in the same
to above two acres a man (the rest being secretly usurped by the
patricians), they, through the meanness of their support and the greatness
of their expense, being generally indebted, no sooner returned home with
victory to lay down their arms, than they were snatched up by their
creditors, the nobility, to cram jails. Whereupon, but with the greatest
modesty that was ever known in the like case, they first fell upon debate,
affirming 'That they were oppressed and captivated at home, while abroad
they fought for liberty and empire, and that the freedom of the common
people was safer in time of war than peace, among their enemies than their
fellow-citizens.' It is true that when they could not get the Senate,
through fear, as was pretended by the patricians, to assemble and take
their grievances into consideration, they grew so much the warmer, that it
was glad to meet; where Appius Claudius, a fierce spirit, was of opinion
that recourse should be had to consular power, whereby some of the brands
of sedition being taken off, the flame might be extinguished. Servilius,
being of another temper, thought it better and safer to try if the people
might be bowed than broken.

"But this debate was interrupted by tumultuous news of the near
approach of the Volsci, a case in which the Senate had no recourse but to
the people, who, contrary to their former custom upon the like occasions,
would not stir a foot, but fell a-laughing, and saying, 'Let them fight
that have something to fight for.' The Senate that had purses, and could
not sing so well before the thief, being in a great perplexity, found no
possible way out of it but to beseech Servilius, one of a genius well
known to be popular, that he would accept of the consulship, and make some
such use of it as might be helpful to the patrician interest. Servilius,
accepting of the offer, and making use of his interest with the people,
persuaded them to hope well of the good intention of the fathers, whom it
would little beseem to be forced to those things which would lose their
grace, and that in view of the enemy, if they came not freely; and withal
published an edict, that no man should withhold a citizen of Rome by
imprisonment from giving his name (for that was the way, as I shall have
opportunity hereafter to show more at large, whereby they drew out their
armies), nor to seize or sell any man's goods or children that were in the
camp. Whereupon the people with a mighty concourse immediately took arms,
marched forth, and (which to them was as easy as to be put into the humor,
and that, as appears in this place, was not hard) totally defeated the
Volsci first, then the Sabines (for the neighboring nations, hoping to
have had a good bargain of the discord in Rome, were up in arms on all
sides), and after the Sabines the Aurunci. Whence returning, victorious in
three battles they expected no less than that the Senate would have made
good their words, when Appius Claudius, the other Consul, of his innate
pride, and that he might frustrate the faith of his colleague, caused the
soldiers (who being set at liberty, had behaved themselves with such
valor) to be restored at their return to their creditors and their jails.

"Great resort upon this was made by the people to Servilius,
showing him their wounds, calling him to witness how they had behaved
themselves, and minding him of his promise. Poor Servilius was sorry, but
so overawed with the headiness of his colleague, and the obstinacy of the
whole faction of the nobility, that, not daring to do anything either way,
he lost both parties, the fathers conceiving that he was ambitious, and
the people that he was false; while the Consul Claudius, continuing to
countenance such as daily seized and imprisoned some of the indebted
people, had still new and dangerous controversies with them, insomuch that
the commonwealth was torn with horrid division, and the people (because
they found it not so safe or so effectual in public) minded nothing but
laying their heads together in private conventicles. For this Aulus
Virginius and Titus Vetusius, the new Consuls, were reproved by the Senate
as slothful, and upbraided with the virtue of Appius Claudius. Whereupon
the Consuls having desired the Senate that they might know their pleasure,
showed afterward their readiness to obey it, by summoning the people
according to command, and requiring names whereby to draw forth an army
for diversion, but no man would answer. Report hereof being made to the
Senate, the younger sort of the fathers grew so hot with the Consuls that
they desired them to abdicate the magistracy, which they had not the
courage to defend.

"The Consuls, though they conceived themselves to be roughly
handled, made this soft answer. 'Fathers conscript, that you may please to
take notice it was foretold some horrid sedition is at hand, we shall only
desire that they whose valor in this place is so great, may stand by us to
see how we behave ourselves, and then be as resolute in your commands as
you will; your fatherhoods may know if we be wanting in the performance.'

"At this some of the hot young noblemen returned with the Consuls
to the tribunal, before which the people were yet standing; and the
Consuls having generally required names in vain, to put it to something,
required the name of one that was in their eye particularly; on whom, when
he moved not, they commanded a lictor to lay hands, but the people,
thronging about the party summoned, forbade the lictor, who durst not
touch him; at which the hotspurs that came with the consuls, enraged by
the affront, descended from the throne to the aid of the lictor; from whom
in so doing they turned the indignation of the people upon themselves with
such heat that the Consuls interposing, thought fit, by remitting the
assembly, to appease the tumult; in which, nevertheless, there had been
nothing but noise. Nor was there less in the Senate, being suddenly
rallied upon this occasion, where they that received the repulse, with
others whose heads were as addled as their own, fell upon the business as
if it had been to be determined by clamor till the Consuls, upbraiding the
Senate that it differed not from the market-place, reduced the house to
orders.

"And the fathers, having been consulted accordingly, there were
three opinions: Publius Virginius conceived that the consideration to be
had upon the matter in question, or aid of the indebted and imprisoned
people, was not to be further extended than to such as had engaged upon
the promise made by Servilius; Titus Largius, that it was no time to think
it enough, if men's merits were acknowledged, while the whole people, sunk
under the weight of their debts, could not emerge without some common aid,
which to restrain, by putting some into a better condition than others,
would rather more inflame the discord than extinguish it; Appius Claudius
(still upon the old haunt) would have it that the people were rather
wanton than fierce; it was not oppression that necessitated, but their
power that invited them to these freaks; the empire of the Consuls since
the appeal to the people (whereby a plebeian might ask his fellows if he
were a thief) being but a mere scarecrow. 'Go to,' says he, 'let us create
the dictator, from whom there is no appeal, and then let me see more of
this work, or him that shall forbid my lictor.'

"The advice of Appius was abhorred by many; and to introduce a
general recision of debts with Largius, was to violate all faith; that of
Virginius, as the most moderate, would have passed best, but that there
were private interests, that constant bane of the public, which withstood
it. So they concluded with Appius, who also had been dictator, if the
Consuls and some of the graver sort had not thought it altogether
unseasonable, at a time when the Volsci and the Sabines were up again, to
venture so far upon alienation of the people: for which cause Valerius,
being descended from the Publicolas, the most popular family, as also in
his own person of a mild nature, was rather trusted with so rigid a
magistracy. Whence it happened that the people, though they knew well
enough against whom the Dictator was created, feared nothing from
Valerius; but upon a new promise made to the same effect with that of
Servilius, hoped better another time, and throwing away all disputes, gave
their names roundly, went out, and, to be brief, came home again as
victorious as in the former action, the Dictator entering the city in
triumph. Nevertheless, when he came to press the Senate to make good his
promise, and do something for the ease of the people, they regarded him no
more as to that point than they had done Servilius. Whereupon the
Dictator, in disdain to be made a stale, abdicated his magistracy, and
went home. Here, then, was a victorious army without a captain, and a
Senate pulling it by the beard in their gowns. What is it (if you have
read the story, for there is not such another) that must follow? Can any
man imagine that such only should be the opportunity upon which this
people could run away?

"Alas, poor men, the AEqui and the Volsci and the Sabines were
nothing, but the fathers invincible! There they sat, some 300 of them
armed all in robes, and thundering with their tongues, without any hopes
in the earth to reduce them to any tolerable conditions. Wherefore, not
thinking it convenient to abide long so near them, away marches the army,
and encamps in the fields. This retreat of the people is called the
secession of Mount Aventin, where they lodged, very sad at their
condition, but not letting fall so much as a word of murmur against the
fathers. The Senate by this time were great lords, had the whole city to
themselves; but certain neighbors were upon the way that might come to
speak with them, not asking leave of the porter. Wherefore their minds
became troubled, and an orator was posted to the people to make as good
conditions with them as he could; but, whatever the terms were, to bring
them home, and with all speed. And here it was covenanted between the
Senate and the people, that these should have magistrates of their own
election, called the tribunes, upon which they returned.

"To hold you no longer, the Senate having done this upon necessity,
made frequent attempts to retract it again, while the tribunes, on the
other side, to defend what they had got, instituted their Tributa Comitia,
or council of the people; where they came in time, and, as disputes
increased, to make laws without the authority of the Senate, called
plebiscita. Now to conclude in the point at which I drive: such were the
steps whereby the people of Rome came to assume debate, nor is it in art
or nature to debar a people of the like effect, where there is the like
cause. For Romulus, having in the election of his Senate squared out a
nobility for the support of a throne, by making that of the patricians a
distinct and hereditary order, planted the commonwealth upon two contrary
interests or roots, which, shooting forth, in time produced two
commonwealths, the one oligarchical in the nobility, the other a mere
anarchy of the people, and ever after caused a perpetual feud and enmity
between the Senate and the people, even to death.

"There is not a more noble or useful question in the politics than
that which is started by Machiavel, whether means were to be found whereby
the enmity that was between the Senate and the people of Rome could have
been removed? Nor is there any other in which we, on the present occasion,
are so much concerned, particularly in relation to this author; forasmuch
as his judgment in the determination of the question standing, our
commonwealth falls. And he that will erect a commonwealth against the
judgment of Machiavel, is obliged to give such reasons for his enterprise
as must not go a-begging. Wherefore to repeat the politician very
honestly, but somewhat more briefly, he disputes thus:

"'There be two sorts of commonwealths, the one for preservation, as
Lacedaemon and Venice; the other for increase, as Rome.

"'Lacedaemon, being governed by a King and a small Senate, could
maintain itself a long time in that condition, because the inhabitants,
being few, having put a bar upon the reception of strangers, and living in
a strict observation of the laws of Lycurgus, which now had got
reputation, and taken away all occasion of tumults, might well continue
long in tranquillity. For the laws of Lycurgus introduced a greater
equality in estates, and a less equality in honors, whence there was equal
poverty; and the plebeians were less ambitious, because the honors or
magistracies of the city could extend but to a few and were not
communicable to the people, nor did the nobility by using them ill ever
give them a desire to participate of the same. This proceeded from the
kings, whose principality, being placed in the midst of the nobility, had
no greater means whereby to support itself than to shield the people from
all injury; whence the people, not fearing empire, desired it not; and so
all occasion of enmity between the Senate and the people was taken away.
But this union happened especially from two causes: the one that the
inhabitants of Lacedaemon being few, could be governed by the few; the
other, that, not receiving strangers into their commonwealth, they did not
corrupt it, nor increase it to such a proportion as was not governable by
the few.

"'Venice has not divided with her plebeians, but all are called
gentlemen that be in administration of the government; for which
government she is more beholden to chance than the wisdom of her
law-makers; for many retiring to those islands, where that city is now
built, from the inundations of barbarians that overwhelmed the Roman
Empire, when they were increased to such a number that to live together it
was necessary to have laws, they ordained a form of government, whereby
assembling often in council upon affairs, and finding their number
sufficient for government, they put a bar upon all such as repairing
afterward to their city should become inhabitants, excluding them from
participation of power. Whence they that were included in the
administration had right, and they that were excluded, coming afterward,
and being received upon no other conditions to be inhabitants, had no
wrong, and therefore had no occasion, nor (being never trusted with arms)
any means to be tumultuous. Wherefore this commonwealth might very well
maintain itself in tranquillity.

"'These things considered, it is plain that the Roman legislators,
to have introduced a quiet state, must have done one of these two things:
either shut out strangers, as the Lacedemonians; or, as the Venetians, not
allowed the people to bear arms. But they did neither. By which means the
people, having power and increase, were in perpetual tumult. Nor is this
to be helped in a commonwealth for increase, seeing if Rome had cut off
the occasion of her tumults, she must have cut off the means of her
increase, and by consequence of her greatness.

"'Wherefore let a legislator consider with himself whether he would
make his commonwealth for preservation, in which case she may be free from
tumults; or for increase, in which case she must be infested with them.

"'If he makes her for preservation, she may be quiet at home, but
will be in danger abroad. First, because her foundation must be narrow,
and therefore weak, as that of Lacedaemon, which lay but upon 30,000
citizens; or that of Venice, which lies but upon 3,000. Secondly, such a
commonwealth must either be in peace, or war; if she be in peace, the few
are soonest effeminated and corrupted and so obnoxious also to faction. If
in war, succeeding ill, she is an easy prey; or succeeding well, ruined by
increase: a weight which her foundation is not able to bear. For
Lacedaemon, when she had made herself mistress upon the matter of all
Greece, through a slight accident, the rebellion of Thebes, occasioned by
the conspiracy of Pelopidas discovering this infirmity of her nature, the
rest of her conquered cities immediately fell off, and in the turn as it
were of a hand reduced her from the fullest tide to the lowest ebb of her
fortune. And Venice having possessed herself of a great part of Italy by
her purse, was no sooner in defence of it put to the trial of arms than
she lost all in one battle.

"'Whence I conclude that in the ordination of a commonwealth a
legislator is to think upon that which is most honorable, and, laying
aside models for preservation, to follow the example of Rome conniving at,
and temporizing with, the enmity between the Senate and the people, as a
necessary step to the Roman greatness. For that any man should find out a
balance that may take in the conveniences and shut out the inconveniences
of both, I do not think it possible.' These are the words of the author,
though the method be somewhat altered, to the end that I may the better
turn them to my purpose.

"My lords, I do not know how you hearken to this sound; but to hear
the greatest artist in the modern world giving sentence against our
commonwealth is that with which I am nearly concerned. Wherefore, with all
honor due to the prince of politicians, let us examine his reasoning with
the same liberty which he has asserted to be the right of a free people.
But we shall never come up to him, except by taking the business a little
lower, we descend from effects to their causes. The causes of commotion in
a commonwealth are either external or internal. External are from enemies,
from subjects, or from servants. To dispute then what was the cause why
Rome was infested by the Italian, or by the servile wars; why the slaves
took the capitol; why the Lacedaemonians were near as frequently troubled
with their helots as Rome with all those; or why Venice, whose situation
is not trusted to the faith of men, has as good or better quarter with
them whom she governs, than Rome had with the Latins; were to dispute upon
external causes. The question put by Machiavel is of internal causes;
whether the enmity that Was between the Senate and the people of Rome
might have been removed. And to determine otherwise of this question than
he does, I must lay down other principles than he has done. To which end I
affirm that a commonwealth, internally considered, is either equal or
unequal. A commonwealth that is internally equal, has no internal cause of
commotion, and therefore can have no such effect but from without. A
commonwealth internally unequal has no internal cause of quiet, and
therefore can have no such effect but by diversion.

"To prove my assertions, I shall at this time make use of no other
than his examples. Lacedaemon was externally unquiet, because she was
externally unequal, that is as to her helots; and she was internally at
rest, because she was equal in herself, both in root and branch; in the
root by her agrarian, and in branch by the Senate, inasmuch as no man was
thereto qualified but by election of the people. Which institution of
Lycurgus is mentioned by Aristotle, where he says that rendering his
citizens emulous (not careless) of that honor, he assigned to the people
the election of the Senate. Wherefore Machiavel in this, as in other
places, having his eye upon the division of patrician and plebeian
families as they were in Rome, has quite mistaken the orders of this
commonwealth, where there was no such thing. Nor did the quiet of it
derive from the power of the kings, who were so far from shielding the
people from the injury of the nobility, of which there was none in his
sense but the Senate, that one declared end of the Senate at the
institution was to shield the people from the kings, who from that time
had but single votes. Neither did it proceed from the straitness of the
Senate, or their keeping the people excluded from the government, that
they were quiet, but from the equality of their administration, seeing the
Senate (as is plain by the oracle, their fundamental law) had no more than
the debate, and the result of the commonwealth belonged to the people.

"Wherefore when Theopompus and Polydorus, Kings of Lacedaemon,
would have kept the people excluded from the government by adding to the
ancient law this clause, 'If the determination of the people be faulty, it
shall be lawful for the Senate to resume the debate,' the people
immediately became unquiet, and resumed that debate, which ended not till
they had set up their ephors, and caused that magistracy to be confirmed
by their kings.' For when Theopompus first ordained that the ephori or
overseers should be created at Lacedaemon, to be such a restraint upon the
kings there as the tribunes were upon the consuls at Rome, the Queen
complained to him, that by this means he transmitted the royal authority
greatly diminished to his children: "I leave indeed less,"
answered he, "but more lasting." And this was excellently said;
for that power only is safe which is limited from doing hurt. Theopompus
therefore, by confining the kingly power within the bounds of the laws,
did recommend it by so much to the people's affection as he removed it
from being arbitrary.' By which it may appear that a commonwealth for
preservation, if she comes to be unequal, is as obnoxious to enmity
between the Senate and the people as a commonwealth for increase; and that
the tranquillity of Lacedaemon was derived from no other cause than her
equality.

"For Venice, to say that she is quiet because she disarms her
subjects, is to forget that Lacedaemon disarmed her helots, and yet could
not in their regard be quiet; wherefore if Venice be defended from
external causes of commotion, it is first through her situation, in which
respect her subjects have no hope (and this indeed may be attributed to
her fortune); and, secondly, through her exquisite justice, whence they
have no will to invade her. But this can be attributed to no other cause
than her prudence, which will appear to be greater, as we look nearer; for
the effects that proceed from fortune, if there be any such thing, are
like their cause, inconstant. But there never happened to any other
commonwealth so undisturbed and constant a tranquillity and peace in
herself as are in that of Venice; wherefore this must proceed from some
other cause than chance. And we see that as she is of all others the most
quiet, so the most equal commonwealth. Her body consists of one order, and
her Senate is like a rolling stone, as was said, which never did, nor,
while it continues upon that rotation, never shall gather the moss of a
divided or ambitious interest, much less such a one as that which grasped
the people of Rome in the talons of their own eagles. And if Machiavel,
averse from doing this commonwealth right, had considered her orders, as
his reader shall easily perceive he never did, he must have been so far
from attributing the prudence of them to chance, that he would have
touched up his admirable work to that perfection which, as to the civil
part, has no pattern in the universal world but this of Venice.

"Rome, secure by her potent and victorious arms from all external
causes of commotion, was either beholden for her peace at home to her
enemies abroad, or could never rest her head. My lords, you that are
parents of a commonwealth, and so freer agents than such as are merely
natural, have a care. For, as no man shall show me a commonwealth born
straight that ever became crooked, so no man shall show me a commonwealth
born crooked that ever became straight. Rome was crooked in her birth, or
rather prodigious. Her twins, the patrician and plebeian orders, came, as
was shown by the foregoing story, into the world, one body but two heads,
or rather two bellies; for, notwithstanding the fable out of AEsop,
whereby Menenius Agrippa, the orator that was sent from the Senate to the
people at Mount Aventin, showed the fathers to be the belly, and the
people to be the arms and the legs (which except that, how slothful soever
it might seem, they were nourished, not these only, but the whole body
must languish and be dissolved), it is plain that the fathers were a
distinct belly, such a one as took the meat indeed out of the people's
mouths, but abhorring the agrarian, returned it not in the due and
necessary nutrition of a commonwealth. Nevertheless, as the people that
live about the cataracts of Nilus are said not to hear the noise, so
neither the. Roman writers, nor Machiavel the most conversant with them,
seem among so many of the tribunitian storms to hear their natural voice;
for though they could not miss of it so far as to attribute them to the
strife of the people for participation in magistracy, or, in which
Machiavel more particularly joins, to that about the agrarian, this was to
take the business short, and the remedy for the disease.

"A people, when they are reduced to misery and despair, become
their own politicians, as certain beasts, when they are sick, become their
own physicians, and are carried by a natural instinct to the desire of
such herbs as are their proper cure; but the people, for the greater part,
are beneath the beasts in the use of them. Thus the people of Rome, though
in their misery they had recourse by instinct, as it were, to the two main
fundamentals of a commonwealth, participation of magistracy and the
agrarian, did but taste and spit at them, not (which is necessary in
physic) drink down the potion, and in that their healths. For when they
had obtained participation of magistracy it was but lamely, not to a full
and equal rotation in all elections; nor did they greatly regard it in
what they had got. And when they had attained to the agrarian, they
neglected it so far as to suffer the law to grow obsolete; but if you do
not take the due dose of your medicines (as there be slight tastes which a
man may have of philosophy that incline to atheism) it may chance to be
poison, there being a like taste of the politics that inclines to
confusion, as appears in the institution of the Roman tribunes, by which
magistracy and no more the people were so far from attaining to peace,
that they in getting but so much, got but heads for an eternal feud;
whereas if they had attained in perfection either to the agrarian, they
had introduced the equality and calm of Lacedaemon, or to rotation, and
they had introduced that of Venice: and so there could have been no more
enmity between the Senate and the people of Rome than there was between
those orders in Lacedaemon, or is now in Venice. Wherefore Machiavel seems
to me, in attributing the peace of Venice more to her luck than her
prudence, of the whole stable to have saddled the wrong horse; for though
Rome in her military part could beat it better, beyond all comparison,
upon the sounding hoof, Venice for the civil part has plainly had the
wings of Pegasus.

"The whole question then will come upon this point, whether the
people of Rome could have obtained these orders? And first, to say that
they could not have obtained them without altering the commonwealth, is no
argument; seeing neither could they, without altering the commonwealth,
have obtained their tribunes, which nevertheless were obtained. And if a
man considers the posture that the people were in when they obtained their
tribunes, they might as well, and with as great ease (forasmuch as the
reason why the nobility yielded to the tribunes was no other than that
there was no remedy) have obtained anything else. And for experience, it
was in the like case that the Lacedaemonians did set up their ephors,and
the Athenians,after the battle of Plataea, bowed the Senate (so hard a
thing it is for a commonwealth that was born crooked to become straight)
as much the other way. Nor, if it be objected that this must have ruined
the nobility (and in that deprived the commonwealth of the greatness which
she acquired by them), is this opinion holding, but confuted by the sequel
of the story, showing plainly that the nobility, through the defect of
such orders (that is to say, of rotation and the agrarian), came to eat up
the people; and battening themselves in luxury, to be, as Sallust speaks
of them, 'a most sluggish and lazy nobility, in whom, besides the name,
there was no more than in a statue;' and to bring so mighty a
commonwealth, and of so huge a glory, to so deplorable an end. Wherefore
means might have been found to remove the enmity that was between the
Senate and the people of Rome.

"My lords, if I have argued well, I have given you the comfort and
assurance that, notwithstanding the judgment of Machiavel, your
commonwealth is both safe and sound; but if I have not argued well, then
take the comfort and assurance which he gives you while he is firm, that a
legislator is to lay aside all other examples, and follow that of Rome
only, conniving and temporizing with the enmity between the Senate and the
people as a necessary step to the Roman greatness. Whence it follows that
your commonwealth, at the worst, is that which he has given you his word
is the best.

"I have held your lordships long, but upon an account of no small
importance, which I can now sum up in these few words: where there is a
liquorishness in a popular assembly to debate, it proceeds not from the
constitution of the people, but of the commonwealth. Now that your
commonwealth is of such a constitution as is naturally free from this kind
of intemperance, is that which, to make good, I must divide the remainder
of my discourse into two parts:

"The first, showing the several constitutions of the assemblies of
the people in other commonwealths;

"The second, comparing our assembly of the people with theirs; and
showing how it excludes the inconveniences and embraces the conveniences
of them all.

"In the beginning of the first part I must take notice, that among
the popular errors of our days it is no small one that men imagine the
ancient governments of this kind to have consisted for the most part of
one city that is, of one town; whereas by what we have learned of my
'lords that owned them, it appears that there was not any considerable one
of such a Constitution but Carthage, till this in our days of Venice.

"For to begin with Israel, it consisted of the twelve tribes,
locally spread or quartered throughout the whole territory, and these
being called together by trumpets, constituted the Church or assembly of
the people. The vastness of this weight, as also the slowness thence
unavoidable, became a great cause (as has been shown at large by my Lord
Phosphorus) of the breaking that commonwealth; notwithstanding that the
Temple, and those religious ceremonies for which the people were at least
annually obliged to repair thither, were no small ligament of the tribes,
otherwise but slightly tacked together.

"Athens consisted of four tribes, taking in the whole people, both
of the city and of the territory; not so gathered by Theseus into one
town, as to exclude the country, but to the end that there might be some
capital of the commonwealth: though true it be, that the congregation,
consisting of the inhabitants within the walls, was sufficient to all
intents and purposes, without those of the country. These also being
exceeding numerous, became burdensome to themselves and dangerous to the
commonwealth; the more for their ill-education, as is observed by Xenophon
and Polybius, who compare them to mariners that in a calm are perpetually
disputing and swaggering one with another, and never lay their hands to
the common tackling or safety till they be all endangered by some storm.
Which caused Thucydides, when he saw this people through the purchase of
their misery become so much wiser as to reduce their Comitia or assemblies
to 5,000, to say in his eighth book: 'And now, at least in my time, the
Athenians seem to have ordered their State aright, consisting of a
moderate tempor both of the few (by which he means the Senate of the Bean)
and of the many,' or the 5,000. And he does not only give you his
judgment, but the best proof of it; for 'this,' says he, 'was the first
thing that, after so many misfortunes past, made the city again to raise
her head.' The place I would desire your lordships to note, as the first
example that I find, or think is to be found, of a popular assembly by way
of representative.

"Lacedaemon consisted of 30,000 citizens dispersed throughout
Laconia, one of the greatest provinces in all Greece, and divided, as by
some authors is probable, into six tribes. Of the whole body of these,
being gathered, consisted the great Church or assembly, which had the
legislative power; the little church, gathered sometimes for matters of
concern within the city, consisted of the Spartans only. These happened,
like that of Venice, to be good constitutions of a congregation, but from
an ill-cause the infirmity of a commonwealth, which through her paucity
was oligarchical.

'Wherefore, go which way you will, it should seem that without a
representative of the people, your commonwealth, consisting of a whole
nation, can never avoid falling either into oligarchy or confusion.

"This was seen by the Romans, whose rustic tribes, extending
themselves from the river Arno to the Vulturnus, that is, from Fesulae or
Florence to Capua, invented a way of representative by lots: the tribe
upon which the first fell being the prerogative, and some two or three
more that had the rest, the jure vocatoe. These gave the suffrage of the
commonwealth in two meetings; the prerogative at the first assembly, and
the jure vocatoe at a second.

"Now to make the parallel: all the inconveniences that you have
observed in these assemblies are shut out, and all the conveniences taken
into your prerogative. For first, it is that for which Athens, shaking off
the blame of Xenophon and Polybius, came to deserve the praise of
Thucydides, a representative. And, secondly, not, as I suspect in that of
Athens, and is past suspicion in this of Rome, by lot, but by suffrage, as
was also the late House of Commons, by which means in your prerogatives
all the tribes of Oceana are jure vocatoe; and if a man shall except
against the paucity of the standing number, it is a wheel, which in the
revolution of a few years turns every hand that is fit, or fits every hand
that it turns to the public work. Moreover, I am deceived if, upon due
consideration, it does not fetch your tribes, with greater equality and
ease to themselves and to the government, from the frontiers of Marpesia,
than Rome ever brought any one of hers out of her pomoeria, or the nearest
parts of her adjoining territories. To this you may add, that whereas a
commonwealth, which in regard of the people is not of facility in
execution, were sure enough in this nation to be cast off through
impatience; your musters and galaxies are given to the people, as milk to
babes, whereby when they are brought up through four days' election in a
whole year (one at the parish, one at the hundred, and two at the tribe)
to their strongest meat, it is of no harder digestion than to give their
negative or affirmative as they see cause. There be gallant men among us
that laugh at such an appeal or umpire; but I refer it whether you be more
inclining to pardon them or me, who I confess have been this day laughing
at a sober man, but without meaning him any harm, and that is Petrus
Cunaeus, where speaking of the nature of the people, he says, 'that taking
them apart, they are very simple, but yet in their assemblies they see and
know something:, and so runs away without troubling himself with what that
something is. Whereas the people, taken apart, are but so many private
interests; but if you take them together, they are the public interest.

"The public interest of a commonwealth, as has been shown,
is nearest that of mankind, and that of mankind is right reason; but with
aristocracy (whose reason or interest, when they are all together, as
appeared by the patricians, is but that of a party) it is quite contrary:
for as, taken apart, they are far wiser than the people considered in that
manner, so, being put together, they are such fools, who by deposing the
people, as did those of Rome, will saw off the branch whereupon they sit,
or rather destroy the root of their own greatness. Wherefore Machiavel,
following Aristotle, and yet going before him, may well assert, 'that the
people are wiser and more constant in their resolutions than a prince:'
which is the prerogative of popular government for wisdom. And hence it is
that the prerogative of your commonwealth, as for wisdom so for power, is
in the people, which (though I am not ignorant that the Roman prerogative
was so called a proerogando, because their suffrage was first asked) gives
the denomination to your prerogative tribe."

The elections, whether annual or triennial, being shown by the
twenty-second, that which comes in the next place to be considered is --

The twenty-third order, "Showing the power, function, and manner of
proceeding of the prerogative tribe.

"The power or function of the prerogative is of two parts: the one
of result, in which it is the legislative, power, the other of judicature,
in which regard it is the highest court, and the last appeal in this
commonwealth.

"For the former part (the people by this constitution being not
obliged by any law that is not of their own making or confirmation, by the
result of the prerogative, their equal representative) it shall not be
lawful for the Senate to require obedience from the people, nor for the
people to give obedience to the Senate in or by any law that has not been
promulgated, or printed and published for the space of six weeks, and
afterward proposed by the authority of the Senate to the prerogative
tribe, and resolved by the major vote of the same in the affirmative. Nor
shall the Senate have any power to levy war, men, or money, otherwise than
by the consent of the people so given, or by a law so enacted, except in
cases of exigence, in which it is agreed that the power, both of the
Senate and the people, shall be in the dictator so qualified, and for such
a term of time, as is according to that constitution already prescribed.
While a law is in promulgation, the censors shall animadvert upon the
Senate, and the tribunes upon the people, that there be no laying of heads
together, no conventicles or canvassing to carry on or oppose anything;
but that all may be done in a free and open way.

"For the latter part of the power of the prerogative, or that
whereby they are the supreme judicatory of this nation, and of the
provinces of the same, the cognizances of crimes against the majesty of
the people, such as high treason, as also of peculation, that is, robbery
of the treasury, or defraudation of the commonwealth, appertains to this
tribe. And if any person or persons, provincials or citizens, shall appeal
to the people, it belongs to the prerogative to judge and determine the
case; provided that if the appeal be from any court of justice in this
nation or the provinces, the appellant shall first deposit £100 in
the court from which he appeals, to be forfeited to the same if he be cast
in his suit by the people. But the power of the Council of War being the
expedition of this commonwealth, and the martial law of the strategus in
the field, are those only from which there shall lie no appeal to the
people.

"The proceeding of the prerogative in case of a proposition is to
be thus ordered: The magistrates, proposing by authority of the Senate,
shall rehearse the whole matter, and expound it to the people; which done,
they shall put the whole together to the suffrage, with three boxes, the
negative, the affirmative, and the non-sincere; and the suffrage being
returned to the tribunes, and numbered in the presence of the proposers.
If the major vote be in the non-sincere, the proposer shall desist, and
the Senate shall resume the debate. If the major vote be in the negative,
the proposers shall desist, and the Senate, too. But if the major vote be
in the affirmative, then the tribe is clear and the proposers shall begin
and put the whole matter, with the negative and the affirmative (leaving
out the non-sincere) by clauses; and the suffrages being taken and
numbered by the tribunes in the presence of the proposers, shall be
written and reported by the tribunes of the Senate. And that which is
proposed by the authority of the Senate, and confirmed by the command of
the people, is the law of Oceana.

"The proceeding of the prerogative in a case of judicature is to be
thus ordered: The tribunes being auditors of all causes appertaining to
the cognizance of the people, shall have notice of the suit or trial,
whether of appeal or otherwise, that is to be commenced; and if any one of
them shall accept of the same, it appertains to him to introduce it. A
cause being introduced, and the people mustered or assembled for the
decision of the same, the tribunes are presidents of the court, having
power to keep it to orders, and shall be seated upon a scaffold erected in
the middle of the tribe. Upon the right hand shall stand a seat or large
pulpit assigned to the plaintiff or the accuser; and, upon the left,
another for the defendant, each if they please with his counsel. And the
tribunes (being attended upon such occasions with so many ballotins,
secretaries, doorkeepers, and messengers of the Senate as shall be
requisite) one of them shall turn up a glass of the nature of an
hour-glass, but such a one as is to be of an hour and a half's running;
which being turned up, the party or counsel on the right hand may begin to
speak to the people. If there be papers to be read, or witnesses to be
examined, the officer shall lay the glass sideways till the papers be read
and the witnesses examined, and then turn it up again; and so long as the
glass is running, the party on the right hand has liberty to speak, and no
longer. The party on the right hand having had his time, the like shall be
done in every respect for the party on the left. And the cause being thus
heard, the tribunes shall put the question to the tribe with a white, a
black, and a red box (or non-sincere), whether guilty or not guilty. And
if the suffrage being taken, the major vote be in the non-sincere, the
cause shall be reheard upon the next juridicial day following, and put to
the question in the same manner. If the major vote comes the second time
in the non-sincere, the cause shall be heard again upon the third day; but
at the third hearing the question shall be put without the non-sincere.
Upon the first of the three days in which the major vote comes in the
white box, the party accused is absolved; and upon the first of them in
which it comes in the black box, the party accused is condemned. The party
accused being condemned, the tribunes (if the case be criminal) shall put
with the white and the black box these questions, or such of them as,
regard had to the case, they shall conceive most proper:

Whether he shall have a writ of ease;

Whether he shall be fined so much or so much;

Whether he shall be confiscated;

Whether he shall be rendered incapable of magistracy;

Whether he shall be banished;

Whether he shall be put to death.

"These, or any three of these questions, whether simple or such as
shall be thought fitly mixed, being put by the tribunes, that which has
most above half the votes in the black box is the sentence of the people,
which the troop of the third class is to see executed accordingly.

"But whereas by the constitution of this commonwealth it may appear
that neither the propositions of the Senate nor the judicature of the
people will be so frequent as to hold the prerogative in continual
employment, the Senate, a main part of whose office it is to teach and
instruct the people, shall duly (if they have no greater affairs to divert
them) cause an oration to be made to the prerogative by some knight or
magistrate of the Senate, to be chosen out of the ablest men, and from
time to time appointed by the orator of the house, in the great hall of
the Pantheon, while the Parliament resides in the town, or in some grove
or sweet place in the field, while the Parliament for the heat of the year
shall reside in the country, upon every Tuesday, morning or afternoon.

"And the orator appointed for the time to this office
shall first repeat the orders of the commonwealth with all possible
brevity; and then, making choice of one or some part of it, discourse
thereof to the people. An oration or discourse of this nature, being
afterward perused by the Council of State, may as they see cause be
printed and published."

The Archon's comment upon the order I find to have been of this sense:

"MY LORDS:

"To crave pardon for a word or two in further explanation of what
was read, I shall briefly show how the constitution of this tribe or
assembly answers to their function; and how their function, which is of
two parts, the former in the result or legislative power, the latter in
the supreme judicature of the commonwealth, answers to their constitution.
Machiavel has a discourse, where he puts the question, 'Whether the guard
of liberty may with more security be committed to the nobility or to the
people?' Which doubt of his arises through the want of explaining his
terms; for the guard of liberty can signify nothing else but the result of
the commonwealth; so that to say that the guard of liberty may be
committed to the nobility, is to say that the result may be committed to
the Senate, in which case the people signify nothing.

"Now to show it was a mistake to affirm it to have been thus in
Lacedaemon, sufficient has been spoken; and whereas he will have it to be
so in Venice also: 'They,' says Contarini, 'in whom resides the supreme
power of the whole commonwealth, and of the laws, and upon whose orders
depends the authority as well of the Senate as of all the other
magistrates, is the Great Council.' It is institutively in the Great
Council, by the judgment of all that know that commonwealth; though, for
the reasons shown, it be sometimes exercised by the Senate. Nor need I run
over the commonwealths in this place for the proof of a thing so
doubtless, and such as has been already made so apparent, as that the
result of each was in the popular part of it. The popular part of yours,
or the prerogative tribe, consists of seven deputies (whereof three are of
the horse) annually elected out of every tribe of Oceana; which being
fifty, amounts to 150 horse and 200 foot. And the prerogative consisting
of three of these lists, consists of 450 horse and 600 foot, besides those
of the provinces to be hereafter mentioned; by which means the overbalance
in the suffrage remaining to the foot by 150 votes, you have to the
support of a true and natural aristocracy the deepest root of a democracy
that has been ever planted.

"Wherefore there is nothing in art or nature better qualified for
the result than this assembly. it is noted out of Cicero by Machiavel,
'That the people, though they are not so prone to find out truth of
themselves as to follow custom or run into error yet if they be shown
truth, they not only acknowledge and embrace it very suddenly, but are the
most constant and faithful guardians and conservators of it.' it is your
duty and office, whereto you are also qualified by the orders of this
commonwealth, to have the people as you have your hawks and greyhounds, in
leashes and slips, to range the fields and beat the bushes for them, for
they are of a nature that is never good at this sport, but when you spring
or start their proper quarry. Think not that they will stand to ask you
what it is, or less know it than your hawks and greyhounds do theirs; but
presently make such a flight or course, that a huntsman may as well
undertake to run with his dogs, or a falconer to fly with his hawk, as an
aristocracy at this game to compare with the people. The people of Rome
were possessed of no less a prey than the empire of the world, when the
nobility turned tails, and perched among daws upon the tower of monarchy.
For though they did not all of them intend the thing, they would none of
them endure the remedy, which was the agrarian.

"But the prerogative tribe has not only the result, but is the
supreme judicature, and the ultimate appeal in this commonwealth. For the
popular government that makes account to be of any standing, must make
sure in the first place of the appeal to the people. As an estate in trust
becomes a man's own if he be not answerable for it, so the power of a
magistracy not accountable to the people, from whom it was received,
becoming of private use, the commonwealth loses her liberty Wherefore the
right of supreme judicature in the people (Without which there can be no
such thing as popular government) is confirmed by the constant practice of
all commonwealths; as that of Israel in the cases of Achan, and of the
tribe of Benjamin, adjudged by the congregation.

"The dicasterian, or court called the heliaia in Athens, which (the
comitia of that commonwealth consisting of the whole people, and so being
too numerous to be a judicatory) was constituted sometimes of 500, at
others of 1,000, or, according to the greatness of the cause, of 1,500,
elected by the lot out of the whole body of the people, had, with the nine
Archons that were presidents, the cognizance of such causes as were of
highest importance in that State. The five ephors in Lacedaemon, which
were popular magistrates, might question their kings, as appears by the
cases of Pausanias, and of Agis, who being upon his trial in this court,
was cried to by his mother to appeal to the people, as Plutarch has it in
his life. The tribunes of the people of Rome (like, in the nature of their
magistracy, and for some time in number, to the ephors, as being,
according to Halicarnassus and Plutarch, instituted in imitation of them)
had power to summon any man, his magistracy at least being expired (for
from the Dictator there lay no appeal) to answer for himself to the
people. As in the case of Coriolanus, who was going about to force the
people, by withholding corn from them in a famine, to relinquish the
magistracy of the tribunes, in that of Spurius Cassius for affecting
tyranny, of Marcus Sergius for running away at Veii, of Caius Lucretius
for spoiling his province, of Junius Silanus for making war without a
command from the people against the Cimbri, with divers others. And the
crimes of this nature were called loesoe majestatis, or high treason.
Examples of such as were arraigned or tried for peculation, or
defraudation of the commonwealth, were Marcus Curius for intercepting the
money of the Samnites, Salinator for the unequal division of spoils to his
soldiers, Marcus Posthumius for cheating the commonwealth by a feigned
shipwreck. Causes of these two kinds were of a more public nature; but the
like power upon appeals was also exercised by the people in private
matters, even during the time of the kings, as in the case of Horatius.
Nor is it otherwise with Venice, where the Doge Loredano was sentenced by
the great Council, and Antonio Grimani, afterward doge, questioned, for
that he, being admiral, had suffered the Turk to take Lepanto in view of
his fleet.

"Nevertheless, there lay no appeal from the Roman dictator to the
people; which, if there had, might have cost the commonwealth dear, when
Spurius Melius, affecting empire, circumvented and debauched the tribunes:
whereupon Titus Quintus Cincinnatus was created Dictator, who having
chosen Servilius Ahala to be his lieutenant, or magister equitum, sent him
to apprehend Melius, whom, while he disputed the commands of the Dictator
and implored the aid of the people, Ahala cut off upon the place. By which
example you may see in what cases the dictator may prevent the blow which
is ready sometimes to fall ere the people be aware of the danger.
Wherefore there lies no appeal from the Dieci, or the Council of Ten, in
Venice, to the Great Council, nor from our Council of War to the people.
For the way of proceeding of this tribe, or the ballot, it is, as was once
said for all, Venetian.

"This discourse of judicatories whereupon we are fallen, brings us
rather naturally than of design from the two general orders of every
commonwealth, that is to say, from the debating part, or the Senate, and
the resolving part, or the people, to the third, which is the executive
part or the magistracy, whereupon I shall have no need to dwell, for the
executive magistrates of this commonwealth are the strategus in arms; the
signory in their several courts, as the chancery, the exchequer; as also
the councils in divers cases within their instructions; the censors as
well in their proper magistracy, as in the Council of Religion; the
tribunes in the government of the prerogative, and that judicatory; and
the judges with their courts; of all which so much is already said or
known as may suffice.

"The Tuesday lectures or orations to the people will be of
great benefit to the Senate, the prerogative, and the whole nation. To the
Senate, because they will not only teach your Senators elocution, but keep
the system of the government in their memories. Elocution is of great use
to your Senators, for if they do not understand rhetoric (giving it at
this time for granted that the art were not otherwise good) and come to
treat with, or vindicate the cause of the commonwealth against some other
nation that is good at it, the advantage will be subject to remain upon
the merit of the art, and not upon the merit of the cause. Furthermore,
the genius or soul of this government being in the whole and in every
part, they will never be of ability in determination upon any particular,
unless at the same time they have an idea of the whole. That this
therefore must be, in that regard, of equal benefit to the prerogative, is
plain; though these have a greater concernment in it. For this
commonwealth is the estate of the people; and a man, you know, though he
be virtuous, yet if he does not understand his estate, may run out or be
cheated of it. Last of all, the treasures of the politics will by this
means be so opened, rifled, and dispersed, that this nation will as soon
dote, like the Indians, upon glass beads, as disturb your government with
whimsies and freaks of mother-wit, or suffer themselves to be stuttered
out of their liberties. There is not any reason why your grandees, your
wise men of this age, that laugh out and openly at a commonwealth as the
most ridiculous thing, do not appear to be, as in this regard they are,
mere idiots, but that the people have not eyes."

There remains no more relating to the Senate and the people than --

The twenty-fourth order, "Whereby it is lawful for the province of
Marpesia to have thirty knights of their own election continually present
in the Senate of Oceana, together with sixty deputies of horse, and 120 of
foot in the prerogative tribe, endued with equal power (respect had to
their quality and number) in the debate and result of this commonwealth,
provided that they observe the course or rotation of the same by the
annual return of ten knights, twenty deputies of the horse, and forty of
the foot. The like in all respects is lawful for Panopea; and the horse of
both the provinces amounting to one troop, and the foot to one company,
one captain and one cornet of the horse shall be annually chosen by
Marpesia, and one captain and one ensign of the foot shall be annually
chosen by Panopea."

The orb of the prerogative being thus complete, is not unnaturally
compared to that of the moon, either in consideration of the light
borrowed from the Senate, as from the sun; or of the ebbs and floods of
the people, which are marked by the negative or affirmative of this tribe.
And the constitution of the Senate and the people being shown, you have
that of the Parliament of Oceana, consisting of the Senate proposing, and
of the people resolving, which amounts to an act of Parliament. So the
Parliament is the heart, which, consisting of two ventricles, the one
greater and replenished with a grosser matter, the other less and full of
a purer, sucks in and spouts forth the vital blood of Oceana by a
perpetual circulation. Wherefore the life of this government is no more
unnatural or obnoxious upon this score to dissolution than that of a man;
nor to giddiness than the world; seeing the earth, whether it be itself or
the heavens that are in rotation, is so far from being giddy, that it
could not subsist without motion. But why should not this government be
much rather capable of duration and steadiness by motion? Than which God
has ordained no other to the universal commonwealth of mankind: seeing one
generation comes and another goes, but the earth remains firm forever,
that is, in her proper situation or place, whether she be moved or not
moved upon her proper centre. The Senate, the people, and the magistracy,
or the Parliament so constituted, as you have seen, is the guardian of
this commonwealth, and the husband of such a wife as is elegantly
described by Solomon: "She is like the merchant's ships; she brings
her food from far. She considers a field, and buys it: with the fruit of
her hands she plants a vineyard. She perceives that her merchandise is
good. She stretches forth her hands to the poor. She is not afraid of the
snow for her household; for all her household are clothed with scarlet.
She makes herself coverings of tapestry. her clothing is silk and purple.
Her husband is known (by his robes) in the gates, when he sits among the
senators of the land." The gates, or inferior courts, were branches,
as it were, of the Sanhedrim, or Senate, of Israel. Nor is our
commonwealth a worse housewife, nor has she less regard to her
magistrates; as may pear by --

The twenty-fifth order, "That, whereas the public revenue is
through the late civil wars dilapidated, the excise, being improved or
improvable to the revenue of £1,000,000, be applied, for the space of
eleven years to come, to the reparation of the same, and for the present
maintenance of the magistrates, knights, deputies, and other officers,
who, according to their several dignities and functions, shall annually
receive toward the support of the same, as follows:

"The lord strategus marching, is, upon another account, to have
field-pay as general.

Per Annum

The lord strategus sitting...... £2,000

The lord orator...... 2,000

The three commissioners of the seal... 4,500

The three commissioners of the treasury... 4,500

The two censors.... 3,000

The 290 knights, at £500 a man..... 145,000

The four ambassadors-in-ordinary.... 12,000

The Council of War for intelligence.... 3,000

The master of the ceremonies..... 500

The master of the horse...... 500

His substitute..... 150

The twelve ballotins for their winter liveries 240

For summer liveries... 120

For their board-wages...... 480

For the keeping of three coaches of state,

twenty-four coach-horses, with coachmen

and postilions.......... 1,500

For the grooms, and keeping of sixteen

great horses for the master of the

horse, and for the ballotins whom he

is to govern and instruct in the art

of riding.......... 480

The twenty secretaries of the Parliament... 2,000

The twenty doorkeepers, who are to attend

with pole-axes,

For their coats....... 200

For their board-wages.... 1,000

The twenty messengers, which are trumpeters,

For their coats.... 200

For their board-wages..... 1,000

For ornament of the masters of the youth... 5,000

Sum £189,370

"Out of the personal estates of every man, who at his death
bequeaths not above forty shillings to the muster of that hundred wherein
it lies, shall be levied one per cent. till the solid revenue of the
muster of the hundred amounts to £50 per annum for the prizes of the
youth.

"The twelve ballotins are to be divided into three regions,
according to the course of the Senate; the four of the first region to be
elected at the tropic out of such children as the knights of the same
shall offer, not being under eleven years of age, nor above thirteen. And
their election shall be made by the lot at an urn set by the sergeant of
the house for that purpose in the hall of the Pantheon. The livery of the
commonwealth for the fashion or the color may be changed at the election
of the strategus according to his fancy. But every knight during his
session shall be bound to give to his footman, or some one of his footmen,
the livery of the commonwealth.

"The prerogative tribe shall receive as follows:

By the week

The two tribunes of the horse..... £14 0

The two tribunes of the foot..... 12 0

The three captains of the horse..... 15 0

The three cornets..... 9 0

The three captains of the foot.... 12 0

The three ensigns........ 7 0

The 442 horse, at £2 a man..... 884 0

The 592 foot, at £1 10s a man.... 888 0

The six trumpeters..... 7 10

The three drummers........... 2 5

Sum by the week................ £1,850 15

Sum by the year............. £96,239 0

The total of the Senate, the people,

and the magistracy.................... £287,459 15

"The dignity of the commonwealth, and aids of the several
magistracies and offices thereto belonging, bring provided for as
aforesaid, the overplus of the excise, with the product of the sum rising,
shall be carefully managed by the Senate and the people through the
diligence of the officers of the Exchequer, till it amount to £8,000,000,
or to the purchase of about £400,000 solid revenue. At which time,
the term of eleven years being expired, the excise, except it be otherwise
ordered by the Senate and the people, shall be totally remitted and
abolished forever."

At this institution the taxes, as will better appear in the Corollary,
were abated about one-half, which made the order, when it came to be
tasted, to be of good relish with the people in the very beginning; though
the advantages then were no ways comparable to the consequences to be
hereafter shown. Nevertheless, my Lord Epimonus, who with much ado had
been held till now, found it midsummer moon, and broke out of bedlam in
this manner.

"MY LORD ARCHON:

"I have a singing in my head like that of a cart-wheel, my brains
are upon a rotation; and some are so merry, that a man cannot speak his
griefs, but if your high-shod prerogative, and those same slouching
fellows your tribunes, do not take my lord strategus's and my lord
orator's heads, and jolt them together under the canopy, then let me be
ridiculous to all posterity. For here is a commonwealth, to which if a man
should take that of the 'prentices in their ancient administration of
justice at Shrovetide, it were an aristocracy. You have set the very
rabble with truncheons in their hands, and the gentry of this nation, like
cocks with scarlet gills, and the golden combs of their salaries to boot,
lest they should not be thrown at.

"Not a night can I sleep for some horrid apparition or other; one
while these myrmidons are measuring silks by their quarterstaves, another
stuffing their greasy pouches with my lord high treasurer's jacobuses. For
they are above 1,000 in arms to 300, which, their gowns being pulled over
their ears, are but in their doublets and hose. But what do I speak of
1,000? There be 2,000 in every tribe, that is, 100,000 in the whole
nation, not only in the posture of an army, but in a civil capacity
sufficient to give us what laws they please. Now everybody knows that the
lower sort of people regard nothing but money; and you say it is the duty
of a legislator to presume all men to be wicked: wherefore they must fall
upon the richer, as they are an army; or, lest their minds should misgive
them in such a villany, you have given them encouragement that they have a
nearer way, seeing it may be done every whit as well as by the
overbalancing power which they have in elections. There is a fair which is
annually kept in the centre of these territories at Kiberton, a town
famous for ale, and frequented by good fellows; where there is a solemnity
of the pipers and fiddlers of this nation (I know not whether Lacedaemon,
where the Senate kept account of the stops of the flutes and of the
fiddle-strings of that commonwealth, bad any such custom) called the
bull-running, and he that catches and holds the bull, is the annual and
supreme magistrate of that comitia or congregation, called king piper,
without whose license it is not lawful for any of those citizens to enjoy
the liberty of his calling; nor is he otherwise legitimately qualified (or
civitate donatus) to lead apes or bears in any perambulation of the same.
Mine host of the Bear, in Kiberton, the father of ale, and patron of good
football and cudgel players, has any time since I can remember been
grand-chancellor of this order.

"Now, say I, seeing great things arise from small
beginnings, what should hinder the people, prone to their own advantage
and loving money, from having intelligence conveyed to them by this same
king piper and his chancellor, with their loyal subjects the minstrels and
bear-wards, masters of ceremonies, to which there is great recourse in
their respective perambulations, and which they will commission and
instruct, with directions to all the tribes, willing and commanding them,
that as they wish their own good, they choose no other into the next
primum mobile but of the ablest cudgel and football players? Which done as
soon as said, your primum mobile, consisting of no other stuff, must of
necessity be drawn forth into your nebulones and your galimofries; and so
the silken purses of your Senate and prerogative being made of sows' ears,
most of them blacksmiths, they will strike while the iron is hot, and beat
your estates into hob-nails, mine host of the Bear being strategus, and
king piper lord orator. Well, my lords, it might have been otherwise
expressed, but this is well enough a-conscience. In your way, the wit of
man shall not prevent this or the like inconvenience; but if this (for I
have conferred with artists) be a mathematical demonstration, I could
kneel to you, that ere it be too late we might return to some kind of
sobriety. "If we empty our purses with these pomps, salaries,
coaches, lackeys, and pages, what can the people say less than that we
have dressed a Senate and a prerogative for nothing but to go to the park
with the ladies?"

"For all this, I can see my Lord Epimonus every night in the park,
and with ladies; nor do I blame this in a young man, or the respect which
is and ought to be given to a sex that is one-half of the commonwealth of
mankind, and without which the other would be none: but our magistrates, I
doubt, may be somewhat of the oldest to perform this part with much
acceptation; and, as the Italian proverb says, 'Servire e non gradire e
cosa da far morire.' Wherefore we will lay no certain obligation upon them
in this point, but leave them, if it please you, to their own fate or
discretion. But this (for I know my Lord Epimonus loves me, though I can
never get his esteem) I will say, if he had a mistress should use him so,
he would find it a sad life; or I appeal to your lordships, how I can
resent it from such a friend, that he puts king piper's politics in the
balance with mine. King piper, I deny not, may teach his bears to dance,
but they have the worst ear of all creatures. Now how he should make them
keep time in fifty several tribes, and that two years together, for else
it will be to no purpose, may be a small matter with my lord to promise;
but it seems to me of impossible performance. First, through the nature of
the bean; and, secondly, through that of the ballot; or how what he has
hitherto thought so hard, is now come to be easy; but he may think that
for expedition they will eat up these balls like apples.

"However, there is so much more in their way by the constitution of
this, than is to be found in that of any other commonwealth, that I am
reconciled, it now appearing plainly that the points of my lord's arrows
are directed at no other white than to show the excellency of our
government above others; which, as he proceeds further, is yet plainer;
while he makes it appear that there can be no other elected by the people
but smiths:

"'Brontesque Steropesque et nudus membra Pyracmon:'

Othoniel, Aod, Gideon, Jephtha, Samson, as in Israel; Miltiades,
Aristides, Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles, as in Athens; Papyrius,
Cincinnatus, Camillus, Fabius Scipio, as in Rome: smiths of the fortune of
the commonwealth; not such as forged hob-nails, but thunderbolts. Popular
elections are of that kind, that all of the rest of the world is not able,
either in number or glory, to equal those of these three commonwealths.
These indeed were the ablest cudgel and football players; bright arms were
their cudgels, and the world was the ball that lay at their feet.
Wherefore we are not so to understand the maxim of legislators, which
holds all men to be wicked, as if it related to mankind or a commonwealth,
the interests whereof are the only straight lines they have whereby to
reform the crooked; but as it relates to every man or party, under what
color soever he or they pretend to be trusted apart, with or by the whole.
Hence then it is derived, which is made good in all experience, that the
aristocracy is ravenous, and not the people. Your highwaymen are not such
as have trades, or have been brought up to industry; but such commonly
whose education has pretended to that of gentlemen. My lord is so honest,
he does not know the maxims that are of absolute necessity to the arts of
wickedness; for it is most certain, if there be not more purses than
thieves, that the thieves themselves must be forced to turn honest,
because they cannot thrive by their trade; but now if the people should
turn thieves, who sees not that there would be more thieves than purses?
wherefore that a whole people should turn robbers or levellers, is as
impossible in the end as in the means.

"But that I do not think your artist which you mentioned, whether
astronomer or arithmetician, can tell me how many barley-corns would reach
to the sun, I could be content he were called to the account, with which I
shall conclude this point: when by the way I have chid my lords the
legislators, who, as if they doubted my tackling could not hold, would
leave me to flag in a perpetual calm, but for my Lord Epimonus, who
breathes now and then into my sails and stirs the waters. A ship makes not
her way so briskly as when she is handsomely brushed by the waves, and
tumbles over those that seem to tumble against her; in which case I have
perceived in the dark that light has been struck even out of the sea, as
in this place, where my Lord Epimonus feigning to give us a demonstration
of one thing, has given it of another, and of a better. For the people of
this nation, if they amount in each tribe to 2,000 elders and 2,000 youths
upon the annual roll, holding a fifth to the whole tribe, then the whole
of a tribe, not accounting women and children, must amount to 20,000; and
so the whole of all the tribes, being fifty, to 1,000,000.

"Now you have 10,000 parishes, and reckoning these one with
another, each at £1,000 a year dry-rent, the rent or revenue of the
nation, as it is or might be let to farm, amounts to £10,000,000; and
£10,000,000 in revenue divided equally to 1,000,000 of men, comes but
to £10 a year to each wherewith to maintain himself, his wife and
children. But he that has a cow upon the common, and earns his shilling by
the day at his labor, has twice as much already as this would come to for
his share; because if the land were thus divided, there would be nobody to
set him on work. So my Lord Epimonus's footman, who costs him thrice as
much as one of these could thus get, would certainly lose by his bargain.
What should we speak of those innumerable trades whereupon men live, not
only better than others upon good shares of lands, but become also
purchasers of greater estates? Is not this the demonstration which my lord
meant, that the revenue of industry in a nation, at least in this, is
three or four-fold greater than that of the mere rent? If the people then
obstruct industry, they obstruct their own livelihood; but if they make a
war, they obstruct industry. Take the bread out of the people's mouths, as
did the Roman patricians, and you are sure enough of a war, in which case
they may be levellers; but our agrarian causes their industry to flow with
milk and honey. it will be owned that this is true, if the people were
given to understand their own happiness; but where is it they do that? Let
me reply with the like question, where do they not? They do not know their
happiness it should seem in France, Spain, and Italy; but teach them what
it is, and try whose sense is the truer.

"As to the late wars in Germany, it has been affirmed to me there,
that the princes could never make the people to take arms while they had
bread, and have therefore suffered countries now and then to be wasted
that they might get soldiers. This you will find to be the certain pulse
and temper of the people; and if they have been already proved to be the
most wise and constant order of a government, why should we think (when no
man can produce one example of the common soldiery in an army mutinying
because they had not captains' pay) that the prerogative should jolt the
heads of the Senate together because these have the better salaries, when
it must be as evident to the people in a nation, as to the soldiery in an
army, that it is no more possible their emoluments of this kind should be
afforded by any commonwealth in the world to be made equal with those of
the Senate, than that the common soldiers should be equal with the
captains? It is enough for the common soldier that his virtue may bring
him to be a captain, and more to the prerogative, that each of them is
nearer to be a senator.

"If my lord thinks our salaries too great, and that the
commonwealth is not housewife enough, whether is it better housewifery
that she should keep her family from the snow, or suffer them to burn her
house that they may warm themselves? for one of these must be. Do you
think that she came off at a cheaper rate when men had their rewards by £1,000
or £2,000 a year in land if inheritance? if you say that they will be
more godly than they have been, it may be ill taken; and if you cannot
promise that, it is time we find out some way of stinting at least, if not
curing them of that same sacra fames. On the other side, if a poor man (as
such a one may save a city) gives his sweat to the public, with what
conscience can you suffer his family in the meantime to starve? but he
that lays his hand to this plough shall not lose by taking it off from his
own, and a commonwealth that will mend this shall be penny-wise. The
Sanhedrim of Israel, being the supreme, and a constant court of
judicature, could not choose but be exceeding gainful. The Senate of the
Bean in Athens, because it was but annual, was moderately salaried; but
that of the Areopagites, being for life, bountifully; and what advantages
the senators of Lacedaemon had, where there was little money or use of it,
were in honors for life. The patricians having no profit, took all. Venice
being a situation where a man goes but to the door for his employment, the
honor is great and the reward very little; but in Holland a councillor of
state has £1,500 Flemish a year, besides other accommodations. The
States-General have more. And that commonwealth looks nearer her penny
than ours needs to do.

"For the revenue of this nation, besides that of her industry, it
-- amounts, as has been shown, to £10,000,000; and the salaries in
the whole come not to £300,000 a year. The beauty they will add to
the commonwealth will be exceeding great, and the people will delight in
this beauty of their commonwealth; the encouragement they will give to the
study of the public being very progitable, the accommodation they will
afford to your magistrates very honorable and easy. And the sum, when it
or twice as much was spent in bunting and housekeeping, was never any
grievance to the people. I am ashamed to stand huckling upon this point;
it is sordid. Your magistrates are rather to be provided with further
accommodations. For what if there should be sickness? whither will you
have them to remove? And this city in the soundest times, for the heat of
the year, is no wholesome abode: have a care of their healths to whom you
commit your own. I would have the Senate and the people, except they see
cause to the contrary, every first of June to remove into the country air
for the space of three months. You are better fitted with summer-houses
for them than if you had built them to that purpose.

"There is some twelve miles distant the convallium upon
the river Halcionia, for the tribunes and the prerogative, a palace
capable of 1,000 men; and twenty miles distant you have Mount Celia,
reverend as well for the antiquity as state of a castle completely capable
of the Senate, the proposers having lodgings in the convallium, and the
tribunes in Celia, it holds the correspondency between the Senate and the
people exactly And it is a small matter for the proposers, being attended
with the coaches and officers of state, besides other conveniences of
their own, to go a matter of five or ten miles (those seats are not much
farther distant) to meet the people upon any heath or field that shall be
appointed: where, having despatched their business, they may hunt their
own venison (for I would have the great walled park upon the Halcionia to
belong to the signory, and those about the convallium to the tribunes) and
so go to supper. Pray, my lords, see that they do not pull down these
houses to sell the lead of them; for when -- you have considered on it,
they cannot be spared. The founders of the school in Hiera provided that
the boys should have a summer seat. You should have as much care of these
magistrates. But there is such a selling, such a Jewish humor in our
republicans, that I cannot tell what to say to it; only this, any man that
knows what belongs to a commonwealth, or how diligent every nation in that
case has been to preserve her ornaments, and shall see the waste lately
made (the woods adjoining to this city, which served for the delight and
health of it, being cut down to be sold for threepence), will you tell
that they who did such things would never have made a commonwealth. The
like may be said of the ruin or damage done upon our cathedrals, ornaments
in which this nation excels all others. Nor shall this ever be excused
upon the score of religion; for though it be true that God dwells not in
houses made with hands, yet you cannot hold your assemblies but in such
houses, and these are of the best that have been made with hands. Nor is
it well argued that they are pompous, and therefore profane, or less
proper for divine service, seeing the Christians in the primitive Church
chose to meet with one accord in the Temple, so far were they from any
inclination to pull it down."

The orders of this commonwealth, so far, or near so far as they concern
the elders, together with the several speeches at the institution, which
may serve for the better understanding of them as so many commentaries,
being shown, I should now come from the elders to the youth, or from the
civil constitution of this government to the military, but that I judge
this the fittest place whereinto, by the way, to insert the government of
the city though for the present but perfunctorily.

"'The metropolis or capital city of Oceana is commonly called
Emporium, though it consists of two cities distinct, as well in name as in
government, whereof the other is called Hiera, for which cause I shall
treat of each apart, beginning with Emporium.

"Emporium, with the liberties, is under a twofold division, the one
regarding the national, and the other the urban or city government. It is
divided, in regard of the national government, into three tribes, and in
respect of the urban into twenty six, which for distinction's sake are
called wards, being contained under three tribes but unequally; wherefore
the first tribe containing ten wards is called scazon, the second
containing eight metoche, and the third containing as many telicouta, the
bearing of which names in mind concerns the better understanding of the
government.

"Every ward has her wardmote, court, or inquest, consisting of all
that are of the clothing or liveries of companies residing within the
same.

"Such are of the livery or clothing as have attained to the dignity
to wear gowns and parti-colored hoods or tippets, according to the rules
and ancient customs of their respective companies.

"A company is a brotherhood of tradesmen professing the same art,
governed according to their charter by a master and wardens. Of these
there be about sixty, whereof twelve are of greater dignity than the rest,
that is to say, the mercers, grocers, drapers, fishmongers, goldsmiths,
skinners, merchant-tailors, haberdashers, salters, ironmongers, vintners,
clothworkers, which, with most of the rest, have common halls, divers of
them being of ancient and magnificent structure, wherein they have
frequent meetings, at the summons of their master or wardens, for the
managing and regulation of their respective trades and mysteries. These
companies, as I shall show, are the roots of the whole government of the
city. For the liveries that reside in the same ward, meeting at the
wardmote inquest (to which it belongs to take cognizance of all sorts of
nuisances and violations of the customs and orders of the city, and to
present them to the court of aldermen), have also power to make election
of two sorts of magistrates or officers; the first of elders or aldermen
of the ward, the second of deputies of the same, otherwise called common
councilmen.

"The wards in these elections, because they do not elect all at
once, but some one year and some another, observe the distinction of the
three tribes; for example, the scazon, consisting of ten wards, makes
election the first year of ten aldermen, one in each ward, and of 150
deputies, fifteen in each ward, all which are triennial magistrates or
officers, that is to say, are to bear their dignity for the space of three
years.

"The second year the metoche, consisting of eight wards, elects
eight aldermen, one in each ward, and 120 deputies, fifteen in each ward,
being also triennial magistrates.

"The third year telicouta, consisting of a like number of wards,
elects an equal number of like magistrates for a like term. So that the
whole number of the aldermen, according to that of the wards, amounts to
twenty-six; and the whole number of the deputies, to 390.

"The aldermen thus elected have divers capacities; for, first, they
are justices of the peace for the term, and in consequence of their
election. Secondly, they are presidents of the wardmote and governors each
of that ward whereby he was elected. And last of all, these magistrates
being assembled together, constitute the Senate of the city, otherwise
called the court of aldermen; but no man is capable of this election that
is not worth £10,000. This court upon every new election makes choice
of nine censors out of their own number.

"The deputies in like manner being assembled together, constitute
the prerogative tribe of the city, otherwise called the common council, by
which means the Senate and the people of the city were comprehended, as it
were, by the motion of the national government, into the same wheel of
annual, triennial, and perpetual revolution.

"But the liveries, over and above the right of these elections by
their divisions mentioned, being assembled all together at the guild of
the city, constitute another assembly called the common hall.

"The common hall has the right of two other elections; the one of
the lord mayor, and the other of the two sheriffs, being annual
magistrates. The lord mayor can be elected out of no other than one of the
twelve companies of the first ranks; and the common hall agrees by the
plurality of suffrages upon two names, which, being presented to the lord
mayor for the time being, and the court of the aldermen, they elect one by
their scrutiny. For so they call it, though it differs from that of the
commonwealth. The orator or assistant to the lord mayor in holding of his
courts, is some able lawyer elected by the court of aldermen, and called
the recorder of Emporium.

"The lord mayor being thus elected, has two capacities: one
regarding the nation, and the other the city. In that which regards the
city, he is president of the court of aldermen, having power to assemble
the same, or any other council of the city, as the common council or
common hall, at his will and pleasure; and in that which regards the
nation, he is commander-in-chief of the three tribes whereinto the city is
divided; one of which he is to bring up in person at the national muster
to the ballot, as his vice-comites, or high sheriffs, are to do by the
other two, each at their distinct pavilion, where the nine aldermen,
elected censors, are to officiate by three in each tribe, according to the
rules and orders already given to the censors of the rustic tribes. And
the tribes of the city have no other than one common phylarch, which is
the court of aldermen and the common council, for which cause they elect
not at their muster the first list called the prime magnitude.

"The conveniences of this alteration of the city government,
besides the bent of it to a conformity with that of the nation, were many,
whereof I shall mention but a few: as first, whereas men under the former
administration, when the burden of some of these magistracies lay for
life, were oftentimes chosen not for their fitness, but rather unfitness,
or at least unwillingness to undergo such a weight, whereby they were put
at great rates to fine for their ease; a man might now take his share in
magistracy with that equity which is due to the public, and without any
inconvenience to his private affairs. Secondly, whereas the city (inasmuch
as the acts of the aristocracy, or court of aldermen, in their former way
of proceeding, were rather impositions than propositions) was frequently
disquieted with the inevitable consequence of disorder in the power of
debate exercised by the popular part, or common council; the right of
debate being henceforth established in the court of aldermen, and that of
result in the common council, killed the branches of division in the root.
Which for the present may suffice to have been said of the city of
Emporium.

"That of Hiera consists as to the national government of two
tribes, the first called agoroea, the second propola; but as to the
peculiar policy of twelve manipuls, or wards divided into three cohorts,
each cohort containing four wards, whereof the wards of the first cohort
elect for the first year four burgesses, one in each ward, the wards of
the second cohort for the second year four burgesses, one in each ward,
and the wards of the third cohort for the third year four burgesses, one
in each ward, all triennial magistrates; by which the twelve burgesses,
making one court for the government of this city according to their
instructions by act of Parliament, fall likewise into an annual,
triennial, and perpetual revolution.

"This court being thus constituted, makes election of divers
magistrates; as first, of a high steward, who is commonly some person of
quality, and this magistracy is elected in the Senate by the scrutiny of
this court; with him they choose some able lawyer to be his deputy, and to
hold the court; and last of all they elect out of their own number six
censors.

"The high steward is commander-in-chief of the two tribes, whereof
he in person brings up the one at the national muster to the ballot, and
his deputy the other at a distinct pavilion; the six censors chosen by the
court officiating by three in each tribe at the urns; and these tribes
have no other phylarch but this court.

"As for the manner of elections and suffrage, both in Emporium and
Hiera, it may be said, once for all, that they are performed by ballot,
and according to the respective rules already given.

"There be other cities and corporations throughout the
territory, whose policy being much of this kind, would be tedious and not
worth the labor to insert, nor dare I stay. Juvenum manus emicat ardens."

I return, according to the method of the commonwealth, to the remaining
parts of her orbs, which are military and provincial; the military, except
the strategus, and the polemarchs or field-officers, consIsting of the
youth only, and the provincial consisting of a mixture both of elders and
of the youth.

To begin with the youth, or the military orbs, they are circles to which
the commonwealth must have a care to keep close. A man is a spirit raised
by the magic of nature; if she does not stand safe, and so that she may
set him to some good and useful work, he spits fire, and blows up castles;
for where there is life, there must be motion or work; and the work of
idleness is mischief, but the work of industry is health. To set men to
this, the commonwealth must begin betimes with them, or it will be too
late; and the means whereby she sets them to it is education, the plastic
art of government. But it is as frequent as sad in experience (whether
through negligence, or, which in the consequence is all one or worse,
over-fondness in the domestic performance of this duty) that innumerable
children come to owe their utter perdition to their own parents, in each
of which the commonwealth loses a citizen.

Wherefore the laws of a government, how wholesome soever in themselves,
are such as, if men by a congruity in their education be not bred to find
a relish in them, they will be sure to loathe and detest. The education
therefore of a man's own children is not wholly to be committed or trusted
to himself. You find in Livy the children of Brutus, having been bred
under monarchy, and used to a court life, making faces at the Commonwealth
of Rome: "A king (say they) is a man with whom you may prevail when
you have need there should be law, or when you have need there should be
no law; he has favors in the right, and he frowns not in the wrong place;
he knows his friends from his enemies. But laws are deaf, inexorable
things, such as make no difference between a gentleman and an ordinary
fellow; a man can never be merry for them, for to trust altogether to his
own innocence is a sad life." Unhappy wantons! Scipio, on the other
side, when he was but a boy (about two or three and twenty), being
informed that certain patricians of Roman gentlemen, through a qualm upon
the defeat which Hannibal had given them at Cannae, were laying their
heads together and contriving their flight with the transportation of
their goods out of Rome, drew his sword, and setting himself at the door
of the chamber where they were at council, protested "that who did
not immediately swear not to desert the commonwealth, he would make his
soul to desert his body." Let men argue as they please for monarchy,
or against a commonwealth, the world shall never see any man so sottish or
wicked as in cool blood to prefer the education of the sons of Brutus
before that of Scipio; and of this mould, except a Melius or a Manlius,
was the whole youth of that commonwealth, though not ordinarily so well
cast.

Now the health of a government and the education of the youth being of
the same pulse, no wonder if it has been the constant practice of
well-ordered commonwealths to commit the care and feeling of it to public
magistrates. A duty that was performed in such a manner by the
Areopagites, as is elegantly praised by Isocrates. "the Athenians
(says he) write not their laws upon dead walls, nor content themselves
with having ordained punishments for crimes, but provide in such a way, by
the education of their youth, that there be no crimes for punishment."
He speaks of those laws which regarded manners, not of those orders which
concerned the administration of the commonwealth, lest you should think he
contradicts Xenophon and Polybius. The children of Lacedaemon, at the
seventh year of their age, were delivered to the poedonomi, or
schoolmasters, not mercenary, but magistrates of the commonwealth, to
which they were accountable for their charge; and by these at the age of
fourteen they were presented to other magistrates called the beidioei,
having the inspection of the games and exercises, among which that of the
platanista was famous, a kind of fight in squadrons, but somewhat too
fierce. When they came to be of military age they were listed of the mora,
and so continued in readiness for public service under the discipline of
the polemarchs. But the Roman education and discipline by the centuries
and classes is that to which the Commonwealth of Oceana has had a more
particular regard in her three essays, being certain degrees by which the
youth commence as it were in arms for magistracy, as appears by --

The twenty-sixth order, instituting, "That if a parent has but one
son, the education of that one son shall be wholly at the disposition of
that parent. But whereas there be free schools erected and endowed, or to
be erected and endowed in every tribe of this nation, to a sufficient
proportion for the education of the children of the same (which schools,
to the end there be no detriment or hindrance to the scholars upon case of
removing from one to another, are every of them to be governed by the
strict inspection of the censors of the tribes, both upon the
schoolmaster's manner of life and teaching, and the proficiency of the
children, after the rules and method of that in Hiera) if a parent has
more sons than one, the censors of the tribes shall animadvert upon and
punish him that sends not his sons within the ninth year of their age to
some one of the schools of a tribe, there to be kept and taught, if he be
able, at his own charges; and if he be not able, gratis, till they arrive
at the age of fifteen years. And a parent may expect of his sons at the
fifteenth year of their age, according to his choice or ability, whether
it be to service in the way of apprentices to some trade or otherwise, or
to further study, as by sending them to the inns of court, of chancery, or
to one of the universities of this nation. But he that takes not upon him
one of the professions proper to some of those places, shall not continue
longer in any of them than till he has attained to the age of eighteen
years; and every man having not at the age of eighteen years taken upon
him, or addicted himself to the profession of the law, theology, or
physic, and being no servant, shall be capable of the essays of the youth,
and no other person whatsoever, except a man, having taken upon him such a
profession, happens to lay it by ere he arrives at three or four and
twenty years of age, and be admitted to this capacity by the respective.
Phylarchs being satisfied that he kept not out so long with any design to
evade the service of the commonwealth; but, that being no sooner at his
own disposal, it was no sooner in his choice to come in. And if any youth
or other person of this nation have a desire to travel into foreign
countries upon occasion of business, delight, or further improvement of
his education, the same shall be lawful for him upon a pass obtained from
the censors in Parliament, putting a convenient limit to the time, and
recommending him to the ambassadors by whom he shall be assisted, and to
whom he shall yield honor and obedience in their respective residences.
Every youth at his return from his travel is to present the censors with a
paper of his own writing, containing the interest of state or form of
government of the countries, or some one of the countries, where he has
been; and if it he good, the censors shall cause it to be printed and
published, prefixing a line in commendation of the author.

"Every Wednesday next ensuing the last of December, the whole youth
of every parish, that is to say, every man (not excepted by the foregoing
part of the order), being from eighteen years of age to thirty, shall
repair at the sound of the bell to their respective church, and being
there assembled in presence of the overseers, who are to govern the
ballot, and the constable who is to officiate at the urn, shall, after the
manner of the elders, elect every fifth man of their whole number
(provided that they choose not above one of two brothers at one election,
nor above half if they be four or upward) to be a stratiot or deputy of
the youth; and the list of the stratiots so elected being taken by the
overseers, shall be entered in the parish book, and diligently preserved
as a record, called the first essay. They whose estates by the law are
able, or whose friends are willing, to mount them, shall be of the horse,
the rest are of the foot. And he who has been one year of this list, is
not capable of being re-elected till after another year's interval.

"Every Wednesday next ensuing the last of January, the stratiots
being mustered at the rendezvous of their respective hundreds, shall, in
the presence of the jurymen, who are overseers of that ballot, and of the
high constable who is to officiate at the urn, elect out of the horse of
their troop or company one captain, and one ensign or cornet, to the
command of the same. And the jurymen having entered the list of the
hundred into a record to be diligently kept at the rendezvous of the same,
the first public game of this commonwealth shall begin and be performed in
this manner. Whereas there is to be at every rendezvous of a hundred, one
cannon, culverin, or saker, the prize arms being forged by sworn armorers
of this commonwealth, and for their proof, besides their beauty, viewed
and tried at the tower of Emporium, shall be exposed by the justice of
peace appertaining to that hundred (the said justice with the jurymen
being judges of the game), and the judges shall deliver to the horseman
that gains the prize at the career, one suit of arms being of the value £20,
to the pikeman that gains the prize at throwing the bullet, one suit of
arms of the value of £10, to the musketeer that gains the prize at
the mark with his musket, one suit of arms of the value of £10, and
to the cannoneer that gains the prize at the mark with the cannon,
culverin, or saker, a chain of silver being the value of £10,
provided that no one man at the same muster plays above one of the prizes.
Whosoever gains a prize is bound to wear it (if it be his lot) upon
service; and no man shall sell or give away any armor thus won, except he
has lawfully attained to two or more of them at the games.

"The games being ended, and the muster dismissed, the captain of
the troop or company shall repair with a copy of the list to the lord
lieutenant of the tribe, and the high constable with a duplicate of the
same to the custos rotulorum, or muster-master general, to be also
communicated to the censors; in each of which the jurymen, giving a note
upon every name of an only son, shall certify the list is without
subterfuge or evasion; or, if it be not, an account of those upon whom the
evasion or subterfuge lies, to the end that the phylarch or the censors
may animadvert accordingly.

"And every Wednesday next ensuing the last of February, the lord
lieutenant, custos rotulorum, the censors, and the conductor, shall
receive the whole muster of the youth of that tribe at the rendezvous of
the same, distributing the horse and foot with their officers, according
to the directions given in the like case for the distribution of the
elders; and the whole squadron being put by that means in battalia, the
second game of this commonwealth shall begin by the exercise of the youth
in all the parts of their military discipline according to the orders of
Parliament, or direction of the Council of War in that case. And the £100
allowed by the Parliament for the ornament of the muster in every tribe,
shall be expended by the phylarch upon such artificial castles, citadels,
or the like devices, as may make the best and most profitable sport for
the youth and their spectators.

"Which being ended, the censors having prepared the urns by putting
into the horse-urn 220 gold balls, whereof ten are to be marked with the
letter M and other ten with the letter P; into the foot-urn 700 gold
balls, whereof fifty are to be marked, with the letter M and fifty with
the letter P; and after they have made the gold balls in each urn, by the
addition of silver balls to the same, in number equal with the horse and
foot of the stratiots, the lord lieutenant shall call the stratiots to the
urns, where they that draw the silver balls shall return to their places,
and they that draw the gold balls shall fall off to the pavilion, where,
for the space of one hour, they may chop and change their balls according
as one can agree with another, whose lot he likes better.

But the hour being out, the conductor separating them whose gold balls
have no letter from those whose balls are marked, shall cause the crier to
call the alphabet, as first A; whereupon all they whose gold balls are not
marked, and whose surnames begin with the letter A, shall repair to a
clerk appertaining to the custos rotulorum, who shall first take the names
of that letter; then those of B, and so on, till all the names be
alphabetically enrolled. And the youth of this list being 600 foot in a
tribe, that is, 30,000 foot in all the tribes; and 200 horse in a tribe,
that is, 10,000 horse in all the tribes, are the second essay of the
stratiots, and the standing army of this commonwealth to be always ready
upon command to march. They whose balls are marked with M, amounting, by
twenty horse and fifty foot in a tribe, to 2,500 foot and 500 horse in all
the tribes, and they whose balls are marked with P, in every point
correspondent, are parts of the third essay; they in M being straight to
march for Marpesia, and they of P for Panopea, to the ends and according
to the further directions following in the order for the provincial orbs.

"If the polemarchs or field officers be elected by the scrutiny of
the Council of War, and the strategus commanded by the Parliament or the
Dictator to march, the lord lieutenants (who have power to muster and
discipline the youth so often as they receive orders for the same from the
Council of War) are to deliver the second essay, or so many of them as
shall be commanded, to the conductors, who shall present them to the lord
strategus at the time and place appointed by his Excellency to be the
general rendezvous of Oceana, where the Council of War shall have the
accommodation of horses and arms for his men in readiness; and the lord
strategus having armed, mounted, and distributed them, whether according
to the recommendation of their prize arms, or otherwise, shall lead them
away to his shipping, being also ready and provided with victuals,
ammunition, artillery, and all other necessaries; commanding them, and
disposing of the whole conduct of the war by his sole power and authority.
And this is the third essay of the stratiots, which being shipped, or
marched out of their tribes, the lord lieutenants shall re-elect the
second essay out of the remaining part of the first, and the Senate
another strategus.

"If any veteran or veterans of this nation, the term of whose youth
or militia is expired, having a desire to be entertained in the further
service of the commonwealth, shall present him or themselves at the
rendezvous of Oceana to the strategus, it is in his power to take on such
and so many of them as shall be agreed by the polemarchs, and to send back
an equal number of the stratiots.

"And for the better managing of the proper forces of this nation,
the lord strategus, by appointment of the Council of War, and out of such
levies as they shall have made in either or both of the provinces to that
end, shall receive auxiliaries by sea or elsewhere at some certain place,
not exceeding his proper arms in number.

"And whosoever shall refuse any one of his three essays,
except upon cause shown, he be dispensed withal by the phylarch, or, if
the phylarch be not assembled, by the censors of his tribe, shall be
deemed a helot or public servant, shall pay a fifth part of his yearly
revenue, besides all other taxes, to the commonwealth for his protection,
and be incapable of bearing any magistracy except such as is proper to the
law. Nevertheless if a man has but two sons, the lord lieutenant shall not
suffer above one of them to come to the Urn at one election of the second
essay, and though he has above two sons, there shall not come above half
the brothers at one election; and if a man has but one son, he shall not
come to the urn at all without the consent of his parents, or his
guardians, nor shall it be any reproach to him or impediment to his
bearing of magistracy"

This order, with relation to foreign expeditions, will be proved and
explained together with --

The twenty-seventh order, "Providing, in case of invasion
apprehended, that the lords high sheriffs of the tribes, upon commands
received from the Parliament or the Dictator, distribute the bands of the
elders into divisions, after the nature of the essays of the youth; and
that the second division or essay of the elders, being made and consisting
of 30,000 foot and 10,000 horse, be ready to march with the second essay
of the youth, and be brought also by the conductors to the strategus.

"The second essay of the elders and youth being marched out of
their tribes, the lords high sheriffs and lieutenants shall have the
remaining part of the annual bands both of elders and youth in readiness,
which, if the beacons be fired, shall march to the rendezvous to be in
that case appointed by the Parliament or the Dictator: And the beacons
being fired, the curiata comitia, or parochial congregations, shall elect
a fourth both of elders and youth to be immediately upon the guard of the
tribes, and dividing themselves as aforesaid, to march also in their
divisions according to orders, which method in case of extremity shall
proceed to the election of a third, or the levy of a second, or of the
last man in the nation, by the power of the lords high sheriffs, to the
end that the commonwealth in her utmost pressure may show her trust that
God in his justice will remember mercy, by humbling herself, and yet
preserving her courage, discipline, and constancy, even to the last drop
of her blood and the utmost farthing.

"The services performed by the youth, or by the elders, in
case of invasion, and according to this order, shall be at their proper
cost and charges that are any ways able to endure it; but if there be such
as are known in their parishes to be so indigent that they cannot march
out of their tribes, nor undergo the burden in this case incumbent, then
the congregations of their parishes shall furnish them with sufficient
sums of money to be repaid upon the certificate of the same by the
Parliament when the action shall be over. And of that which is
respectively enjoined by this order, any tribe, parish, magistrate, or
person that shall fail, is to answer for it, at the Council of War, as a
deserter of his country."

The Archon, being the greatest captain of his own, if not of any age,
added much to the glory of this commonwealth, by interweaving the militia
with more art and lustre than any legislator from or before the time of
Servius Tullius, who constituted the Roman militia. But as the bones or
skeleton of a man, though the greatest part of his beauty be contained in
their proportion or symmetry, yet shown without flesh are a spectacle that
is rather horrid than entertaining, so without discourses are the orders
of a commonwealth; which, if she goes forth in that manner, may complain
of her friends that they stand mute and staring upon her. Wherefore this
order was thus fleshed by the Lord Archon:

"MY LORDS:

"Diogenes seeing a young fellow drunk, told him that his father was
drunk when he begot him. For this, in natural generation, I must confess I
see no reason; but in the political it is right. The vices of the people
are from their governors; those of their governors from their laws or
orders; and those of their laws or orders from their legislators. Whatever
was in the womb imperfect, as to her proper work, comes very rarely or
never at all to perfection afterward; and the formation of a citizen in
the womb of the commonwealth is his education.

"Education by the first of the foregoing orders is of six kinds: at
the school, in the mechanics, at the universities, at the inns of court or
chancery, in travels, and in military discipline, some of which I shall
but touch, and some I shall handle more at large.

"That which is proposed for the erecting and endowing of schools
throughout the tribes, capable of all the children of the same, and able
to give to the poor the education of theirs gratis, is only matter of
direction in case of very great charity, as easing the needy of the charge
of their children from the ninth to the fifteenth year of their age,
during which time their work cannot be profitable; and restoring them when
they may be of use, furnished with tools whereof there are advantages to
be made in every work, seeing he that can read and use his pen has some
convenience by it in the meanest vocation. And it cannot be conceived but
that which comes, though in small parcels, to the advantage of every man
in his vocation, must amount to the advantage of every vocation, and so to
that of the whole commonwealth. Wherefore this is commended to the charity
of every wise-hearted and well-minded man, to be done in time, and as God
shall stir him up or enable him; there being such provision already in the
case as may give us leave to proceed without obstruction.

"Parents, under animadversion of the censors, are to dispose of
their children at the fifteenth year of their age to something; but what,
is left, according to their abilities or inclination, at their own choice.
This, with the multitude, must be to the mechanics, that is to say to
agriculture or husbandry, to manufactures, or to merchandise.

"Agriculture is the bread of the nation; we are hung upon it by the
teeth; it is a mighty nursery of strength, the best army, and the most
assured knapsack; it is managed with the least turbulent or ambitious, and
the most innocent hands of all other arts. Wherefore I am of Aristotle's
opinion, that a commonwealth of husbandmen -- and such is ours -- must be
the best of all others. Certainly my lords, you have no measure of what
ought to be, but what can be, done for the encouragement of this
profession. I could wish I were husband good enough to direct something to
this end; but racking of rents is a vile thing in the richer sort, an
uncharitable one to the poorer, a perfect mark of slavery, and nips your
commonwealth in the fairest blossom. On the other side, if there should be
too much ease given in this kind, it would occasion sloth, and so destroy
industry, the principal nerve of a commonwealth. But if aught might be
done to hold the balance even between these two, it would be a work in
this nation equal to that for which Fabius was surnamed Maximus by the
Romans.

"In manufactures and merchandise the Hollander has gotten the start
of us; but at the long run it will be found that a people working upon a
foreign commodity does but farm the manufacture, and that it is really
entailed upon them only where the growth of it is native; as also that it
is one thing to have the carriage of other men's goods, and another for a
man to bring his own to the best market. Wherefore (nature having provided
encouragement for these arts in this nation above all others, where, the
people growing, they of necessity must also increase) it cannot but
establish them upon a far more sure and effectual foundation than that of
the Hollanders. But these educations are in order to the first things or
necessities of nature; as husbandry to the food, manufacture to the
clothing, and merchandise to the purse of the commonwealth.

"There be other things in nature, which being second as to their
order, for their dignity and value are first; and such to which the other
are but accommodations; of this sort are especially these: religion,
justice, courage, and wisdom.

"The education that answers to religion in our government is that
of the universities. Moses, the divine legislator, was not only skilful in
all the learning of the Egyptians, but took also into the fabric of his
commonwealth the learning of the Midianites in the advice of Jethro; and
his foundation of a university laid in the tabernacle, and finished in the
Temple, became that pinnacle from whence (according to many Jewish and
Christian authors) all the learning in the world has taken wing; as the
philosophy of the Stoics from the Pharisees; that of the Epicureans from
the Sadducees; and from the learning of the Jews, so often quoted by our
Saviour, and fulfilled in him, the Christian religion. Athens was the most
famous university in her days; and her senators, that is to say, the
Areopagites, were all philosophers. Lacedaemon, to speak truth, though she
could write and read, was not very bookish. But he that disputes hence
against universities, disputes by the same argument against agriculture,
manufacture, and merchandise; every one of these having been equally
forbid by Lycurgus, not for itself (for if he had not been learned in all
the learning of Crete, and well travelled in the knowledge of other
governments, he had never made his commonwealth), but for the diversion
which they must have given his citizens from their arms, who, being but
few, if they had minded anything else, must have deserted the
commonwealth. For Rome, she had ingenium par ingenio, was as learned as
great, and held our College of Augurs in much reverence. Venice has taken
her religion upon trust. Holland cannot attend it to be very studious. Nor
does Switzerland mind it much; yet are they all addicted to their
universities. We cut down trees to build houses; but I would have somebody
show me, by what reason or experience the cutting down of a university
should tend to the setting up of a commonwealth. Of this I am sure, that
the perfection of a commonwealth is not to be attained without the
knowledge of ancient prudence, nor the knowledge of ancient prudence
without learning, nor learning without schools of good literature, and
these are such as we call universities.

"Now though mere university learning of itself be that which (to
speak the words of Verulamius) 'crafty men contemn, and simple men only
admire, yet is it such as wise men have use of; for studies do not teach
their own use, but that is a wisdom without and above them, won by
observation. Expert men may execute, and perhaps judge, of particulars one
by one; but the general councils and the plots, and the marshalling of
affairs, come best from those that are learned.' Wherefore if you would
have your children to be statesmen, let them drink by all means of these
fountains, where perhaps there were never any. But what though the water a
man drinks be not nourishment, it is the vehicle without which he cannot
be nourished.

Nor is religion less concerned in this point than government: for take
away your universities, and in a few years you lose it. "The holy
Scriptures are written in Hebrew and Greek; they that have neither of
these languages may think light of both; but find me a man that has one in
perfection, the study of whose whole life it has not been. Again, this is
apparent to us in daily conversation, that if four or five persons that
have lived together be talking, another speaking the same language may
come in, and yet understand very little of their discourse, in that it
relates to circumstances, persons, things, times and places which he knows
not. It is no otherwise with a man, having no insight of the times in
which they were written, and the circumstances to which they relate, in
the reading of ancient books, whether they be divine or human. For
example, when we fall upon the discourse about baptism and regeneration
that was between our Saviour and Nicodemus, where Christ reproaches him
with his ignorance in this matter. 'Art thou a doctor in Israel, and
understandest not these things?, What shall we think of it? or wherefore
should a doctor in Israel have understood these things more than another,
but that both baptism and regeneration, as was showed at large by my Lord
Phosphorus, were doctrines held in Israel? I instance in one place of a
hundred, which he, that has not mastered the circumstances to which they
relate, cannot understand. Wherefore to the understanding of the
Scripture, it is necessary to have ancient languages, and the knowledge of
ancient times, or the aid of them who have such knowledge; and to have
such as may be always able and ready to give such aid (unless you would
borrow it of another nation, which would not only be base, but deceitful)
it is necessary to a commonwealth that she have schools of good
literature, or universities of her own.

"We are commanded, as has been said more than once, to search the
Scriptures; and which of them search the Scriptures, they that take this
pains in ancient languages and learning, or they that will not, but trust
to translations only, and to words as they sound to present circumstances?
than which nothing is more fallible, or certain to lose the true sense of
Scriptures, pretended to be above human understanding, for no other cause
than that they are below it. But in searching the Scriptures by the proper
use of our universities, we have been heretofore blest with greater
victories and trophies against the purple hosts and golden standards of
the Romish hierarchy than any nation; and therefore why we should
relinquish this upon the presumption of some, that because there is a
greater light which they have, I do not know. There is a greater light
than the sun, but it does not extinguish the sun, nor does any light of
God's giving extinguish that of nature, but increase and sanctify it.
Wherefore, neither the honor bore by the Israelitish, Roman, or any other
commonwealth that I have shown, to their ecclesiastics, consisted in being
governed by them, but in consulting them in matters of religion, upon
whose responses or oracles they did afterward as they thought fit.

"Nor would I be here mistaken, as if, by affirming the universities
to be, in order both to religion and government, of absolute necessity, I
declared them or the ministry in any wise fit to be trusted, so far as to
exercise any power not derived from the civil magistrate in the
administration of either. if the Jewish religion were directed and
established by Moses, it was directed and established by the civil
magistrate; or if Moses exercised this administration as a prophet, the
same prophet did invest with the same administration the Sanhedrim, and
not the priests; and so does our commonwealth the Senate, and not the
clergy. They who had the supreme administration or government of the
national religion in Athens, were the first Archon, the rex sacrificulus,
or high-priest, and a polemarch, which magistrates were ordained or
elected by the holding up of hands in the church, congregation, or comitia
of the people. The religion of Lacedaemon was governed by the kings, who
were also high-priests, and officiated at the sacrifice; these had power
to substitute their pythii, ambassadors, or nuncios, by which, not without
concurrence of the Senate, they held intelligence with the oracle of
Apollo at Delphos. And the ecclesiastical part of the Commonwealth of Rome
was governed by the pontifex maximus, the rex sacrificulus, and the
Flamens, all ordained or elected by the people, the pontifex by the
tribes, the King by the centuries, and the Flamens by the parishes.

"I do not mind you of these things, as if, for the matter, there
were any parallel to be drawn out of their superstitions to our religion,
but to show that for the manner, ancient prudence is as well a rule in
divine as human things; nay, and such a one as the apostles themselves,
ordaining elders by the holding up of hands in every congregation, have
exactly followed; for some of the congregations where they thus ordained
elders were those of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, the countries of
Lycaona, Pisidia, Pamphilia, Perga, with Attalia. Now that these cities
and countries, when the Romans propagated their empire into Asia, were
found most of them commonwealths, and that many of the rest were endued
with like power, so that the people living under the protection of the
Roman emperors continued to elect their own magistrates, is so known a
thing, that I wonder whence it is that men, quite contrary to the
universal proof of these examples, will have ecclesiastical government to
be necessarily distinct from civil power, when the right of the elders
ordained by the holding up of hands in every congregation to teach the
people, was plainly derived from the same civil power by which they
ordained the rest of their magistrates. And it is not otherwise in our
commonwealth, where the parochial congregation elects or ordains its
pastor. To object the Commonwealth of Venice in this place, were to show
us that it has been no otherwise but where the civil power has lost the
liberty of her conscience by embracing popery; as also that to take away
the liberty of conscience in this administration from the civil power,
were a proceeding which has no other precedent than such as is popish.

"Wherefore your religion is settled after the following manner: the
universities are the seminaries of that part which is national, by which
means others with all safety may be permitted to follow the liberty of
their own consciences, in regard that, however they behave themselves, the
ignorance of the unlearned in this case cannot lose your religion nor
disturb your government, which otherwise it would most certainly do; and
the universities with their emoluments, as also the benefices of the whole
nation, are to be improved by such augmentations as may make a very decent
and comfortable subsistence for the ministry, which is neither to be
allowed synods nor assemblies, except upon the occasion shown in the
universities, when they are consulted by the Council of State, and
suffered to meddle with affairs of religion, nor to be capable of any
other public preferment whatsoever; by which means the interest of the
learned can never come to corrupt your religion, nor disturb your
government, which otherwise it would most certainly do. Venice, though she
does not see, or cannot help the corruption of her religion, is yet so
circumspect to avoid disturbance of her government in this kind, that her
Council proceeds not to election of magistrates till it be proclaimed fora
papalini, by which words such as have consanguinity with red hats, or
relation to the Court of Rome, are warned to withdraw.

"If a minister in Holland meddles with matter of state, the
magistrate sends him a pair of shoes; whereupon, if he does not go, he is
driven away from his charge. I wonder why ministers, of all men, should be
perpetually tampering with government; first because they, as well as
others, have it in express charge to submit themselves to the ordinances
of men; and secondly because these ordinances of men must go upon such
political principles as they of all others, by anything that can be found
in their writings or actions, least understand: whence you have the
suffrage of all nations to this sense, that an ounce of wisdom is worth a
pound of clergy. Your greatest clerks are not your wisest men: and when
some foul absurdity in state is committed, it is common with the French,
and even the Italians, to call it 'pas de clerc,' or 'governo de prete.'
They may bear with men that will be preaching without study, while they
will be governing without prudence. My lords, if you know not how to rule
your clergy, you will most certainly, like a man that cannot rule his
wife, have neither quiet at home nor honor abroad. Their honest vocation
is to teach your children at the schools and the universities, and the
people in the parishes, and yours is concerned to see that they do not
play the shrews, of which parts does consist the education of your
commonwealth, so far as it regards religion.

"To justice, or that part of it which is commonly executive,
answers the education of the inns of court and chancery. Upon which to
philosophize, requires a public kind of learning that I have not. But they
who take upon them any profession proper to the educations mentioned --
that is, theology, physic, or law -- are not at leisure for the essays.
Wherefore the essays, being degrees whereby the youth commence for all
magistracies, offices, and honors in the parish, hundred, tribe, Senate,
or prerogative; divines, physicians, and lawyers not taking these degrees,
exclude themselves from all such magistracies, offices, and honors. And
whereas lawyers are likest to exact further reason for this, they (growing
up from the most gainful art at the bar to those magistracies upon the
bench which are continually appropriated to themselves, and not only
endowed with the greatest revenues, but also held for life) have the least
reason of all the rest to pretend to any other, especially in an equal
commonwealth, where accumulation of magistracy or to take a person engaged
by his profit to the laws, as they stand, into the power, which is
legislative, and which should keep them to what they were, or ought to he,
were a solecism in prudence. It is true that the legislative power may
have need of advice and assistance from the executive magistracy, or such
as are learned in the law; for which cause the judges are, as they have
heretofore been, assistants in the Senate. Nor, however it came about, can
I see any reason why a judge, being but an assistant or lawyer, should be
member of a legislative council.

"I deny not that the Roman patricians were all patrons, and that
the whole people were clients, some to one family and some to another, by
which means they had their causes pleaded and defended in some appearance
gratis; for the patron took no money, though if he had a daughter to
marry, his clients were to pay her portion, nor was this so great a
grievance. But if the client accused his patron, gave testimony or
suffrage against him, it was a crime of such a nature that any man might
lawfully kill him as a traitor; and this, as being the nerve of the
optimacy, was a great cause of ruin to that commonwealth; for when the
people would carry anything that pleased not the Senate, the senators were
ill provided if they could not intercede-that is, oppose it by their
clients; with whom, to vote otherwise than they pleased, was the highest
crime. The observation of this bond till the time of the Gracchi -- that
is to say, till it was too late, or to no purpose to break it -- was the
cause why, in all the former heats and disputes that had happened between
the Senate and the people, it never came to blows, which indeed was good;
but withal, the people could have no remedy, which was certainly evil.
Wherefore I am of opinion that a senator ought not to be a patron or
advocate, nor a patron or advocate to be a senator; for if his practice be
gratis it debauches the people, and if it be mercenary it debauches
himself: take it which way you will, when he should be making of laws, he
will be knitting of nets.

"Lycurgus, as I said, by being a traveller became a legislator, but
in times when prudence was another thing. Nevertheless we may not shut out
this part of education in a commonwealth, which will be herself a
traveller; for those of this make have seen the world, especially because
this is certain (though it be not regarded in our times, when things being
left to take their chance, it fares with us accordingly) that no man can
be a politician except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except
he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician. Now if he
has no knowledge in history he cannot tell what has been, and if he has
not been a traveller, he cannot tell what is; but he that neither knows
what has been, nor what is, can never tell what must be, or what may be.
Furthermore, the embassies-in-ordinary by our constitution are the prizes
of young men, more especially such as have been travellers. Wherefore they
of these inclinations, having leave of the censors, owe them an account of
their time, and cannot choose but lay it out with some ambition of praise
or reward, where both are open, whence you will have eyes abroad, and
better choice of public ministers, your gallants showing themselves not
more to the ladies at their balls than to your commonwealth at her Academy
when they return from their travels.

"But this commonwealth being constituted more especially of two
elements, arms and councils, drives by a natural instinct at courage and
wisdom; which he who has attained is arrived at the perfection of human
nature. It is true that these virtues must have some natural root in him
that is capable of them; but this amounts not to so great a matter as some
will have it. For if poverty makes an industrious, a moderate estate a
temperate, and a lavish fortune a wanton man, and this be the common
course of things, wisdom then is rather of necessity than inclination. And
that an army which was meditating upon flight, has been brought by despair
to win the field, is so far from being strange, that like causes will
evermore produce like effects. Wherefore this commonwealth drives her
citizens like wedges; there is no way with them but thorough, nor end but
that glory whereof man is capable by art or nature. That the genius of the
Roman families commonly preserved itself throughout the line (as to
instance in some, the Manlii were still severe, the Publicolae lovers, and
the Appii haters of the people) is attributed by Machiavel to their
education; nor, if interest might add to the reason why the genius of a
patrician was one thing, and that of a plebeian another, is the like so
apparent between different nations, who, according to their different
educations, have yet as different manners. It was anciently noted, and
long confirmed by the actions of the French, that in their first assaults
their courage was more than that of men, and for the rest less than that
of women, which nevertheless, through the amendment of their discipline,
we see now to be otherwise. I will not say but that some man or nation
upon an equal improvement of this kind may be lighter than some other; but
certainly education is the scale without which no man or nation can truly
know his or her own weight or value. By our histories we can tell when one
Marpesian would have beaten ten Oceaners, and when one Oceaner would have
beaten ten Marpesians. Marc Antony was a Roman, but how did that appear in
the embraces of Cleopatra? You must have some other education for your
youth, or they, like that passage, will show better in romance than true
story.

"The custom of the Commonwealth of Rome in distributing her
magistracies without respect of age, happened to do well in Corvinus and
Scipio; for which cause Machiavel (with whom that which was done by Rome,
and that which is well done, are for the most part all one) commends this
course. Yet how much it did worse at other times, is obvious in Pompey and
Caesar, examples by which Boccalini illustrates the prudence of Venice in
her contrary practice, affirming it to have been no small step to the ruin
of the Roman liberty, that these (having tasted in their youth of the
supreme honors) had no greater in their age to hope for, but by
perpetuating of the same in themselves; which came to blood and ended in
tyranny. The opinion of Verulamius is safe: 'The errors,' says he, 'of
young men are the ruin of business; whereas the errors of old men amount
but to this, that more might have been done, or sooner.' But though their
wisdom be little, their courage is great; wherefore (to come to the main
education of this commonwealth) the militia of Oceana is the province of
youth.

"The distribution of this province by the essays is so fully
described in the order, that I need repeat nothing; the order itself being
but a repetition or copy of that original, which in ancient prudence is of
all others the fairest, as that from whence the Commonwealth of Rome more
particularly derived the empire of the world. And there is much more
reason in this age, when governments are universally broken, or swerved
from their foundations, and the people groan under tyranny, that the same
causes (which could not be withstood when the world was full of popular
governments) should have the like effects.

"The causes in the Commonwealth of Rome, whereof the empire of the
world was not any miraculous, but a natural (nay, I may safely say a
necessary) consequence, are contained in that part of her discipline which
was domestic, and in that which she exercises in her provinces or
conquest. Of the latter I shall have better occasion to speak when we come
to our provincial orbs; the former divided the whole people by tribes,
amounting, as Livy and Cicero show, at their full growth to thirty-five,
and every tribe by the sense or valuation of estates into five classes:
for the sixth being proletary, that is the nursery, or such as through
their poverty contributed nothing to the commonwealth but children, was
not reckoned nor used in arms. And this is the first point of the militia,
in which modern prudence is quite contrary to the ancient; for whereas we,
excusing the rich and arming the poor, become the vassals of our servants,
they, by excusing the poor and arming such as were rich enough to be
freemen, became lords of the earth. The nobility and gentry of this
nation, who understand so little what it is to be the lords of the earth
that they have not been able to keep their own lands, will think it a
strange education for their children to be common soldiers, and obliged to
all the duties of arms; nevertheless it is not for four shillings a week,
but to be capable of being the best man in the field or in the city the
latter part of which consideration makes the common soldier herein a
better man than the general of any monarchical army.

"And whereas it may be thought that this would drink deep of noble
blood, I dare boldly say, take the Roman nobility in the heat of their
fiercest wars, and you shall not find such a shambles of them as has been
made of ours by mere luxury and slothfulness; which, killing the body,
kill the soul also: Animasque in vulnere ponunt. Whereas common right is
that which he who stands in the vindication of, has used that sword of
justice for which he receives the purple of magistracy. The glory of a man
on earth can go no higher, and if he falls he rises again, and comes
sooner to that reward which is so much higher as heaven is above the
earth. To return to the Roman example: every class was divided, as has
been more than once shown, into centuries, and every century was equally
divided into youth and elders; the youth for foreign service, and the
elders for the guard of the territory. In the first class were about
eighteen centuries of horse, being those which, by the institution of
Servius, were first called to the suffrage in the centurial assemblies.
But the delectus, or levy of an army, which is the present business,
proceeded, according to Polybius, in this manner:

"Upon a war decreed, the Consuls elected four-and-twenty military
tribunes or colonels, whereof ten, being such as had merited their tenth
stipend, were younger officers. The tribunes being chosen, the Consuls
appointed a day to the tribes, when those in them of military age were to
appear at the capitol. The day being come, and the youth assembled
accordingly, the Consuls ascended their tribunal, and the younger tribunes
were straight divided into four parts after this manner: four were
assigned to the first legion (a legion at the most consisted of 6,000 foot
and 300 horse), three to the second, four to the third, and three to the
fourth. The younger tribunes being thus distributed, two of the elder were
assigned to the first legion, three to the second, two to the third, and
three to the fourth; and the officers of each legion thus assigned, having
drawn the tribes by lot, and being seated according to their divisions at
a convenient distance from each other, the tribe of the first lot was
called, whereupon they that were of it knowing the business, and being
prepared, presently bolted out four of their number, in the choice whereof
such care was taken that they offered none that was not a citizen, no
citizen that was not of the youth, no youth that was not of some one of
the five classes, nor any one of the five classes that was not expert at
his exercises. Moreover, they used such diligence in matching them for age
and stature, that the officers of the legion, except they happened to be
acquainted with the youth so bolted, were forced to put themselves upon
fortune, while they of the first legion chose one, they of the second the
next, they of the third another and the fourth youth fell to the last
legion; and thus was the election (the legions and the tribes varying
according to their lots) carried on till the foot were complete.

"The like course with little alteration was taken by the horse
officers till the horse also were complete. This was called giving of
names, which the children of Israel did also by lot; and if any man
refused to give his name, he was sold for a slave, or his estate
confiscated to the commonwealth. 'When Marcus Curius the Consul was forced
to make a sudden levy, and none of the youth would give in their names,
all the tribes being put to the lot, he commanded the first name drawn out
of the urn of the Pollian tribe (which happened to come first) to be
called; but the youth not answering, he ordered his goods to be sold;
which was conformable to the law in Israel, according to which Saul took a
yoke of oxen, and hewed them in pieces, and sent them throughout the
tribes, saying, 'Whosoever comes not forth to battle after Saul and
Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen.' By which you may observe also
that they who had no cattle were not of the militia in Israel. But the age
of the Roman youth by the Tullian law determined at thirty; and by the law
(though it should seem by Machiavel and others that this was not well
observed) a man could not stand for magistracy till he was miles emeritus,
or had fulfilled the full term of his militia, which was complete in his
tenth stipend or service, nor was he afterward obliged under any penalty
to give his name, except the commonwealth were invaded, in which case the
elders were as well obliged as the youth. The Consul might also levy
milites evocatos, or soldiers, commanded men out of such as had served
their turn, and this at his discretion. The legions being thus complete,
were divided by two to each consul, and in these no man had right to serve
but a Roman citizen; now because two legions made but a small army, the
Romans added to every one of their arms an equal number of foot, and a
double number of horse levied among their Latin or Italian associates; so
a consular army, with the legions and auxiliaries, amounted to about
30,000, and whereas they commonly levied two such armies together, these
being joined made about 60,000.

"The steps whereby our militia follows the greatest captain, are
the three essays; the first, elected by a fifth man in the parishes, and
amounting in the whole to 100,000, choose their officers at the hundreds,
where they fall also to their games or exercises, invited by handsome
prizes, such as for themselves and the honor of them will be coveted, such
as will render the hundred a place of sports, and exercise of arms all the
year long, such as in the space of ten years will equip 30,000 men horse
and foot, with such arms for their forge, proof, and beauty, as
(notwithstanding the argyraspides, or silver shields of Alexander's
guards) were never worn by so many, such as will present marks of virtue
and direction to your general or strategus in the distribution of his
army, which doubles the value of them to the proprietors, who are bound to
wear them, and eases the commonwealth of so much charge, so many being
armed already.

"But here will be the objection now. How shall such a revenue be
compassed? Fifty pounds a year in every hundred is a great deal, not so
easily raised; men will not part with their money, nor would the sum, as
it is proposed by the order of Pompey, rise in many years. These are
difficulties that fit our genius exactly, and yet £1,000 in each
hundred, once levied, establishes the revenue forever. Now the hundreds
one with another are worth £10,000 a year dry-rent, over and above
personal estates, which bring it to twice the value, so that a twentieth
part of one year's revenue of the hundred does it. if you cannot afford
this while you pay taxes, though from henceforth they will be but small
ones, do it when you pay none. if it be then too much for one year, do it
in two; if it be too much for two years, do it in four. What husbands have
we hitherto been? what is become of greater sums? My lords, if you should
thus cast your bread upon the waters, after many days you shall find it;
stand not huckling when you are offered corn and your money again in the
mouth of the sack.

"But to proceed: the first essay being officered at the hundreds,
and mustered at the tribes (where they are entertained with other sports,
which will be very fine ones), proceeds to the election of the second
essay, or standing army of this nation, consisting of 30,000 foot and
10,000 horse; and these, upon a war decreed, being delivered at the
rendezvous of Oceana to the strategus, are the third essay, which answers
to the Roman legions. But you may observe, that whereas the consuls
elected the military tribunes, and raised commanded men out of the
veterans at their own discretion, our polemarchs, or field officers, are
elected by the scrutiny of the Council of War, and our veterans not
otherwise taken on than as volunteers, and with the consent of the
polemarchs, which may serve for the removal of certain scruples which
might otherwise be incident in this place, though without encouragement by
the Roman way of proceeding, much less by that which is proposed. But
whereas the Roman legions in all amounted not in one army to above 30,000
men, or little more, you have here 40,000; and whereas they added
auxiliaries, it is in this regard that Marpesia will be a greater revenue
to you t